Generation of MOSFET Switch Operated High Electric Field for Electroporation Application

Abstract

Electroporation is a process of controlled destabilization of live cell plasma membrane under application of external high electric fields.This process increases the permeability of plasma membrane leading to the development of pores on the cell surface which can be exploited for various purposes such as transport of plasmid DNA,drugs, other micro and macromolecules.Due to the in volvement of complex electronic blocks that can enable precise application of high voltage pulses of short duration,the existing devices in the market are quite expensive. The current project has the objective to construct a MOSFET switch operated high voltage pulse generator for electroporation application that would be cost-effective, portable and open system.Briefly, the pulse generator was simulated on Proteus and with appropriate programming, the duration of each pulse and number of pulses can be altered asper the end user requirement. This user-generated pulse output was given to the input of optocoupler which isolates the low voltage and high voltage circuits. An internal power supply was designed and implemented for MOSFET driver using centre tap rectifier method.A power MOSFET switching circuitry driver and power supply circuit was designed and simulated in NI Multisim design suite with results observed in the virtual oscilloscope. Hardware implementation of the circuit was done and the result was observed in Digital Storage O scilloscope. A custom made cuvette holder was used to hold Bio-Rad cuvette of gap size 1 mm.DH5α strain of E.coli
with appropriate plasmid suspension was put inside the cuvette for electroporation at 180 with a pulse duration of 5 ms. The device was further validated by comparing the presence of bacterial colonies against the control.
Thecurrent work laid a foundation for successful design fabrication of an in-house low- cost, programmable
electroporator device using MOSFET switch for high voltage pulse generation.