Electrical impedance measurement of a live cell is important for monitoring the cell’s status. Label-free and non-invasive techniques for measuring the impedance of live cells have attracted much attention. Existing techniques are capable of measuring the impedance of entire cell populations and/or the instantaneous impedance of single cells, but an approach to track and monitor the electrical properties of single cells during their growth process has not yet been reported. This paper presents a microfluidic device integrated with optically-controlled electrodes (MOCE) for electrical impedance measurement of multiple individual cells over a time period. An equivalent circuit model to quantify the seal resistance, membrane capacitance, cytoplasmic resistance of single cells is proposed. In experiments, the adherence process of C2C12 myoblast cells was characterized by measuring individual cells’ impedance data. During cell growth, the seal resistance $R_{seal}$ increased gradually, while the membrane capacitance stayed at approximately $10^{-9}$ F and the cytoplasmic resistance stayed at approximately $10^{9} ~\Omega $ . The results demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the MOCE-based method for on-demand single-cell electrical impedance measurement. [2020-0265]

中文翻译：

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一种带有光控电极的微流体装置，用于目标单细胞的按需电阻抗测量

活细胞的电阻抗测量对于监测细胞状态很重要。用于测量活细胞阻抗的无标记和非侵入性技术引起了广泛关注。现有技术能够测量整个细胞群的阻抗和/或单个细胞的瞬时阻抗，但尚未报道跟踪和监测单个细胞在其生长过程中的电特性的方法。本文介绍了一种与光控电极 (MOCE) 集成的微流体装置，用于在一段时间内测量多个单个细胞的电阻抗。提出了量化单个细胞的密封电阻、膜电容、细胞质电阻的等效电路模型。在实验中，通过测量单个细胞的阻抗数据来表征 C2C12 成肌细胞的粘附过程。在细胞生长过程中，密封电阻 $R_{密封}$ 逐渐增加，而膜电容保持在大约 $10^{-9}$ F 和细胞质阻力保持在大约 $10^{9} ~\Omega $ . 结果证明了基于 MOCE 的按需单细胞电阻抗测量方法的可行性和有效性。[2020-0265]