Speaker
Carlos Marques
Description
Electric fields are routinely used to facilitate therapeutical crossing of the cell membranes by drugs, DNA and other biomolecules. As a multibillion-dollar business, electroporation rests surprisingly on thin fundamental knowledge. Current modelling of why the electric field can puncture holes in the membrane has been accepted for half-a-century without having been put to stringent experimental tests. We have recently unveiled an extensive set of new data on the occurrence of pores in lipid membranes under an electric field. The results show not only that existing pore formation models cannot account for the experimental observations but point also to the likely reasons why pores form.
