Comprehensive analysis of human cells motion under an irrotational AC electric field in an electro-microfluidic chip.

Clarisse Vaillier,Frédérique Kermarrec,Xavier Gidrol,David Peyrade,Thibault Honegger,Aristides Docoslis

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0095231

Abstract

AC electrokinetics is a versatile tool for contact-less manipulation or characterization of cells and has been widely used for separation based on genotype translation to electrical phenotypes. Cells responses to an AC electric field result in a complex combination of electrokinetic phenomena, mainly dielectrophoresis and electrohydrodynamic forces. Human cells behaviors to AC electrokinetics remain unclear over a large frequency spectrum as illustrated by the self-rotation effect observed recently. We here report and analyze human cells behaviors in different conditions of medium conductivity, electric field frequency and magnitude. We also observe the self-rotation of human cells, in the absence of a rotational electric field. Based on an analytical competitive model of electrokinetic forces, we propose an explanation of the cell self-rotation. These experimental results, coupled with our model, lead to the exploitation of the cell behaviors to measure the intrinsic dielectric properties of JURKAT, HEK and PC3 human cell lines.

Highlights

AC electrokinetic forces have been used in numbers of methods ranging from particle/cell characterization [1,2], separation [3,4] or manipulation [5,6] and can be applied to biosensors, cell therapeutics, drug discovery, medical diagnostics, microfluidic and particle filtration [7] thanks to various designs of electrodes and/or microchannels
Around the inflection point created by the crossover frequency, electrothermal effect (ETE) overpowers DEP and influences cells motion described by regimes 1 and 3
The study of cell destruction and dielectrophoresis is conducted on one cell type (HEK epithelial cells), while three different cell types (HEK, Jurkat T-cells and PC3) were studied for the self-rotation phenomenon

Summary

Introduction

AC electrokinetic forces have been used in numbers of methods ranging from particle/cell characterization [1,2], separation [3,4] or manipulation [5,6] and can be applied to biosensors, cell therapeutics, drug discovery, medical diagnostics, microfluidic and particle filtration [7] thanks to various designs of electrodes and/or microchannels. These forces induce both liquid and micro-scaled objects motions, namely electro-hydrodynamic (EHD) and dielectrophoretic (DEP) forces. We exploit those motions to measure the values of the electrical properties of such cells

Methods

Results

Conclusion