Transfer of plasmid DNA into cells with microelectroporation arrays on a chip

2000

The possibility to transfer pure DNA into bacterial cells forms the basis for the genetic engineering of the cell. Electroporation is a powerful and easy technique to introduce plasmid DNA into cells. Its drawback for use with high-throughput approaches is that with standard electroporation chambers the reactions have to carried out one after the other and the electroporation cuvettes are expensive. To obtain the possibility of high-throughput electroporation reactions Escherichia coli cells were electroinjected in parallel with different plasmids in reactions as small as 100 nl on a microstructured array of electrodes, forming hundred separate electroporation units on a chip of a square in…