Efficient electrotransformation of yeast using bipolar electric pulses

Electroporation has become a routine technique for direct gene transfer in cells and tissue. Although electroporation is a universal phenomenon, transformation efficiency is different from one strain to another, due to physical, biochemical and biological features. There are certain strains where electroporation is leading to a very small number of transformed cells, as a consequence of the lethal effect of a very strong electric field. In this paper we present an improved method for the electrotransformation of yeast strains, based on avoiding strong electric field using bipolar electric pulses.