Supra-Electroporation of Irregularly Shaped 3D Cell Morphologies

If the duration of the external excitation field in an electroporation setup is less than the membrane charging time, the induced electric field can penetrate to the internal cell organelles. This phenomenon, otherwise known as supra-electroporation, is a breakthrough in cell biology engineering because of its potential application in drug delivery and gene transfection. The emphasis of this study is to computationally analyze the effect of the three-dimensional (3D) cell shape on its supra-electroporation behavior. The computational experiments are conducted using a multiphysics solver that combines a quasi-static electromagnetic solver with a well-established non-linear membrane model to account for the changes in membrane conductivity due to the formation of nanopores. The spatial and temporal variations of the nanopores introduced to the nucleus membrane are quantified for realistic cell shape, indicating the importance of the consideration of the actual 3D cell morphology in supra-electroporation studies.