Electricity has also enabled major advances in biology. A technique called electrophoresis<\/a> allows scientists to analyze the molecules of life \u2014 DNA and proteins \u2014 by separating them by their electrical charge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Electrophoresis is not only commonly taught in high school biology, but it\u2019s also a workhorse of many clinical and research laboratories, including mine<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am a biomedical engineering professor<\/a> who works with miniaturized electrophoretic systems. Together, my students and I develop portable versions of these devices that rapidly detect pathogens and help researchers fight against them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Researchers discovered electrophoresis in the 19th century<\/a> by applying an electric voltage to clay particles and observing how they migrated through a layer of sand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After further advances during the 20th century, electrophoresis became standard in laboratories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To understand how electrophoresis works, we first need to explain electric fields<\/a>. These are invisible forces that electrically charged particles, such as protons and electrons, exert on each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A particle with a positive electrical charge, for example, would be attracted toward a particle with a negative charge. The law of \u201copposites attract\u201d applies here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Molecules can also have a charge; whether it\u2019s more positive or negative depends on the types of atoms that make it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In electrophoresis, an electric field is generated between two electrodes connected to a power supply. One electrode has a positive charge and the other has a negative charge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They are positioned on opposite sides of a container filled with water and a little bit of salt, which can conduct electricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When charged molecules such as DNA and proteins are present in the water, the electrodes create a force field between them that pushes the charged particles toward the oppositely charged electrode. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This process is called electrophoretic migration<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Researchers like electrophoresis because it is fast and flexible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Electrophoresis can help analyze distinct types of particles, from molecules to microbes. Further, electrophoresis can be carried out with materials such as paper, gels and thin tubes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1972, physicist Stanislav Dukhin<\/a> and his colleagues observed another type of electrophoretic migration called nonlinear electrophoresis<\/a> that could separate particles not only by their electrical charge but also by their size and shape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Further advancements in electrophoresis have made it a useful tool to fight pathogens. In particular, the microfluidics revolution<\/a> made possible the tiny laboratories<\/a> that allow researchers to rapidly detect pathogens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1999, researchers found that these tiny electrophoresis systems could also separate intact pathogens<\/a> by differences in their electrical charge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They placed a mixture of several types of bacteria in a very thin glass capillary that was then exposed to an electric field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some bacteria exited the device faster than others due to their distinct electrical charges, making it possible to separate the microbes by type.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Measuring their migration speeds allowed scientists to identify each species of bacteria present in the sample through a process that took less than 20 minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Microfluidics improved this process even further. Microfluidic devices are small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their miniature size allows them to perform analyses much faster than conventional laboratory equipment because particles don\u2019t need to travel that far through the device to be analyzed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This means the molecules or pathogens researchers are looking for are more easily detected and less likely to be lost during analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, samples analyzed using conventional electrophoresis systems would need to travel through capillary tubes that are about 11 to 31 inches (30 to 80 centimeters) long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These can take 40 to 50 minutes to process and are not portable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In comparison, samples analyzed with tiny electrophoresis systems<\/a> migrate through microchannels that are only 0.4 to 2 inches (1 to 5 centimeters) long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This translates to small, portable devices with analysis times of about two to three minutes<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nonlinear electrophoresis has enabled more powerful devices by allowing researchers to separate and detect pathogens by their size and shape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My lab colleagues and I showed that combining nonlinear electrophoresis with microfluidics can not only separate distinct types of bacterial cells<\/a> but also live and dead bacterial cells<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Microfluidic electrophoresis has the potential to be useful across industries. Primarily, these small systems can replace conventional analysis methods with faster results, greater convenience and lower cost<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, when testing the efficacy of antibiotics<\/a>, these tiny devices could help researchers quickly tell whether pathogens are dead after treatment. It could also help doctors decide which drug is most appropriate for a patient by quickly distinguishing between normal bacteria and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My lab is also working on developing microelectrophoresis systems for purifying bacteriophage viruses<\/a> that can be used to treat bacterial infections<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With further development, the power of electric fields and microfluidics can speed up how researchers detect and fight pathogens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Blanca H. Lapizco-Encinas<\/a>, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Rochester Institute of Technology<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Microfluidics makes use of tiny channels to speed up analyses of biomolecules such as DNA and proteins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":340972,"featured_media":573575,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31750],"tags":[98044,98043,98042],"class_list":["post-573574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","tag-blanca-lapizco-encinas","tag-electrophoresis","tag-microfluidics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573574"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/340972"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573574"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":573578,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573574\/revisions\/573578"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/573575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Electrophoresis-system-detecting-pathogens-by-charge.jpg\")
Electric fields and pathogens<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Tiny electrophoresis systems in medicine<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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