Applications

  • High-throughput microbial and mammalian cell transformation
  • Engineered biology, metabolic pathway design, and nucleic acid-based therapies
  • AI/ML-based strain optimization and screening platforms

Advantages/Benefits

  • Delivers consistent voltage and timing regardless of sample variation
  • Eliminates pre-pulsing to avoid early cell damage and improve reproducibility
  • Compatible with 384-well plates for large-scale screening
  • Reduces reagent use with microfluidic-scale electroporation
  • Integrates with lab automation platforms in cell engineering

Background

Electroporation is a technique for introducing DNA into cells. The success of this process hinges on the precise delivery of an electrical pulse, which must be carefully controlled to transiently permeabilize the cell membrane without causing permanent damage. To achieve this control, conventional systems measure a sample’s electrical properties and adjust the circuit for impedance before delivering the pulse. However, this process is time-consuming, limiting throughput in large-scale applications. Variations in buffer conductivity, cell density, or DNA concentration can also cause inconsistent pulses and reduce reproducibility.

Technology Overview

Researchers at Berkeley Lab have developed a precision pulse generator for electroporation. This technology uses a novel circuit design to deliver an electrical pulse with a precisely defined voltage and duration that is unaffected by variations in sample impedance. By making the pulse delivery inherently consistent, the system eliminates the need for the time-consuming pre-pulse measurement step common in conventional electroporators, reducing cell damage and improving transformation efficiency. This innovation removes a key bottleneck and adapts to variation in DNA concentration and sequence, enabling rapid, parallel processing in a multi-well plate format. The resulting high-quality, reproducible data is ideal for automated synthetic biology workflows and for training AI/ML models for predictive biological engineering.

Development Stage

Full-scale Prototype 

For More Information:

N/A

Principal Investigator

  • Jess M. Sustarich
  • William R. Gaillard
  • Kshitiz Gupta
  • Hector Garcia Martin
  • Anup K. Singh

Status

Patent pending 

Opportunities

Available for licensing or collaborative research