Low-voltage electrical cell lysis using a microfluidic device

Cell lysis, where cellular material is released, is the basis for the separation and purification of cell contents, biochemical analysis, and other related experiments. It is also a key step in molecular, real-time, and cancer diagnoses as well as in the drug screening of pathogens. The current methods of lysing cells have several limitations, such as damage to the activity of cellular components, the need for a large number of cell samples, time-consuming processes, and the danger of high voltage. Therefore, a simple, fast, and efficient method for the manipulation of micro-volume cells or for single cell lysis is significant for further scientific research and practical application. In this study, a new low-voltage controllable method for cell lysis was established, and a corresponding microfluidic chip was developed. Simple, efficient and rapid micro-volume cells and single cell lysis were successfully achieved under a low-voltage alternating current with a voltage of 16 Vp-p and frequency of 10 kHz. The lysis process was investigated in detail by separately labelling the whole cell, cytoplasm, and nucleus using fluorescent proteins, which indicated that the whole cell was completely lysed. Analysis of voltage and frequency effects revealed that a higher voltage and optimized frequency enhanced the cell lysis efficiency. The presented study provides a new strategy for the lysis of micro-volume cells or a single cell, which is valuable for on-chip real-time diagnostics and point of care (POC) applications.