| AVS 55th International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Biological, Organic, and Soft Materials Focus Topic | Wednesday Sessions |
| Session BO+AS+BI+NC-WeM |
| Session: | Organized and Structured Organic Interfaces |
| Presenter: | C. Prodan, New Jersey Institute of Technology |
| Authors: | C. Prodan, New Jersey Institute of Technology C. Bot, New Jersey Institute of Technology |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Dielectric spectroscopy (DS) is a widely used technique to study the properties of cells, proteins and DNA in a fast, label free and noninvasive way. It measures the complex dielectric permitivities as a function of frequency for the given sample. Cellular membrane potential is on of the most important parameter of a living cell and represents the voltage difference between the inside and outside of a cell. Usual values of the membrane potential are in the range of 100 mV. Across a membrane of 2nm thick, this means electric fields of half million V/cm. Theoretical studies have shown that the membrane potential plays a dominant role on the dielectric permitivity of a cell suspension at low frequencies (0Hz-1kHz). Thus the membrane potential can be obtained from a simple measurement of the cell suspension dispersion curves. This talk presents the application of DS to measure and monitor the membrane potential from the low frequency dispersion curves of living cell suspensions of bacteria and mammalian cells. This technique is tested against the standard techniques for measuring the membrane potential such as patch clamping or voltage sensitive dyes.