Assessment of Single Cell Viability Following Light-Induced Electroporation Through use of On-Chip Microfluidics

The high throughput electroporation of single cells is important in applications ranging from genetic transfection to pharmaceutical development. Light-induced electroporation using optoelectronic tweezers (OET) shows promise towards achieving this goal. However, cell viability following light-induced electroporation has yet to be shown. Here we present a novel OET device which incorporates microfluidic channels in order to assess the viability of single cells following light-induced electroporation. Monitoring of single cell electroporation and viability is achieved through the use of fluorescent dyes which are exchanged using the integrated fluidic channels. The successful reversible electroporation of HeLa cells is shown.