Skip to Content
Merck
  • A biosensing system employing nanowell microelectrode arrays to record the intracellular potential of a single cardiomyocyte.

A biosensing system employing nanowell microelectrode arrays to record the intracellular potential of a single cardiomyocyte.

Microsystems & nanoengineering (2022-07-02)
Yuting Xiang, Haitao Liu, Wenjian Yang, Zhongyuan Xu, Yue Wu, Zhaojian Tang, Zhijing Zhu, Zhiyong Zeng, Depeng Wang, Tianxing Wang, Ning Hu, Diming Zhang
ABSTRACT

Electrophysiological recording is a widely used method to investigate cardiovascular pathology, pharmacology and developmental biology. Microelectrode arrays record the electrical potential of cells in a minimally invasive and high-throughput way. However, commonly used microelectrode arrays primarily employ planar microelectrodes and cannot work in applications that require a recording of the intracellular action potential of a single cell. In this study, we proposed a novel measuring method that is able to record the intracellular action potential of a single cardiomyocyte by using a nanowell patterned microelectrode array (NWMEA). The NWMEA consists of five nanoscale wells at the center of each circular planar microelectrode. Biphasic pulse electroporation was applied to the NWMEA to penetrate the cardiomyocyte membrane, and the intracellular action potential was continuously recorded. The intracellular potential recording of cardiomyocytes by the NWMEA measured a potential signal with a higher quality (213.76 ± 25.85%), reduced noise root-mean-square (~33%), and higher signal-to-noise ratio (254.36 ± 12.61%) when compared to those of the extracellular recording. Compared to previously reported nanopillar microelectrodes, the NWMEA could ensure single cell electroporation and acquire high-quality action potential of cardiomyocytes with reduced fabrication processes. This NWMEA-based biosensing system is a promising tool to record the intracellular action potential of a single cell to broaden the usage of microelectrode arrays in electrophysiological investigation.

MATERIALS
Product Number
Brand
Product Description

Sigma-Aldrich
Bovine Serum Albumin, chromatographically purified, New Zealand origin, low endotoxin, suitable for cell culture, pH 7, ≥98%
Sigma-Aldrich
Anti-Actin antibody, Mouse monoclonal, clone AC-40, purified from hybridoma cell culture
Sigma-Aldrich
Goat Anti-Mouse IgG & IgM Antibody, Cy3 conjugate, Chemicon®, from goat
Sigma-Aldrich
DAPI, for nucleic acid staining