Design and Development of Mini-pulsar for Real-Time Bioelectric Experiment
Gyanendra Kumar
*
Homi Bhabha National Institute Mumbai-400085, India.
R Sarathi
Indian Institute of Madras, Chennai-600036, India.
Archana Sharma
Homi Bhabha National Institute Mumbai-400085, India and Bhabha Atomic research Centre mumbai-400085, India.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Investigation of the effect of pulsed electric field on eukaryotic cells has been of interestto biomedical scientists and researchers since a few decades. Reversible electroporation (EP) is used for uptake of chemicals, drugs, DNA into the eukaryotic cells under low electric field (100’s V/cm) of millisecond duration to few hundreds of microsecond duration. An electric field of nanosecond duration and a very high electric field (50’s kV/cm) can stress to intracellular organelles of eukaryotic cells and that can trigger apoptotic pathways. In this article experimental setup has been prepared for real-time investigation of the effect of nanosecond electric field on eukaryotic cells. Pulsar producing ~1.5kV, 20ns FWHM, single shot as well as ~10Hz rep-rate with rise-time as fast as ~10ns, has been prepared using blumlein pulse forming line and avalanche transistor switches. A 300µm gap microplate chamber has been prepared to expose the electric fieldtoeukaryotic cells.
Keywords: Electroporation, microchamber, electrical field, blumlein