Quantification of cell sensitivity to nanosecond duration electrical pulses

Cellular exposure to nanosecond duration electrical pulses (nsEP) has been shown to elicit a marked decrease in plasma membrane resistance hypothesized to be due to formation of nanopores. Patch clamp technique has been used to measure changes in plasma membrane resistance immediately following nsEP exposure. Previous research by our group identified absorbed dose as a single metric to quantify cellular exposure across various pulse parameters. In that work, the relationship between the drop in membrane resistance and absorbed dose was hypothesized to be a measure of cell sensitivity to nsEP. In this study, we explore this hypothesis by employing patch clamp technique prior to exposure to measure whole cell currents at time points before and after exposure. Using two cell lines (GH3 and CHO), dose response curves were generated for single 60ns pulse exposures at 10 and 90 seconds post exposure. From this data, it was evident that dose response curves at 10 seconds post exposure showed increased permeability following nsEP exposure compared to 90 seconds post exposure. We attribute this difference to active recovery of the cell to nanoporation. However, at 90 seconds, the results for both cell types appeared to nearly match previously published results proving that a cell in whole cell configuration is slightly more sensitive to nsEP exposure. Future work will extend this study to include multiple nsEP exposures and additional cell lines.