Electrical Property Characterization of Neural Stem Cells in Differentiation

PLoS One. 2016 Jun 24;11(6):e0158044. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0158044. eCollection 2016.

Abstract

Electrical property characterization of stem cells could be utilized as a potential label-free biophysical approach to evaluate the differentiation process. However, there has been a lack of technology or tools that can quantify the intrinsic cellular electrical markers (e.g., specific membrane capacitance (Cspecific membrane) and cytoplasm conductivity (σcytoplasm)) for a large amount of stem cells or differentiated cells. In this paper, a microfluidic platform enabling the high-throughput quantification of Cspecific membrane and σcytoplasm from hundreds of single neural stem cells undergoing differentiation was developed to explore the feasibility to characterize the neural stem cell differentiation process without biochemical staining. Experimental quantification using biochemical markers (e.g., Nestin, Tubulin and GFAP) of neural stem cells confirmed the initiation of the differentiation process featured with gradual loss in cellular stemness and increased cell markers for neurons and glial cells. The recorded electrical properties of neural stem cells undergoing differentiation showed distinctive and unique patterns: 1) in the suspension culture before inducing differentiation, a large distribution and difference in σcytoplasm among individual neural stem cells was noticed, which indicated heterogeneity that may result from the nature of suspension culture of neurospheres; and 2) during the differentiation in adhering monolayer culture, significant changes and a large difference in Cspecific membrane were located indicating different expressions of membrane proteins during the differentiation process, and a small distribution difference in σcytoplasm was less significant that indicated the relatively consistent properties of cytoplasm during the culture. In summary, significant differences in Cspecific membrane and σcytoplasm were observed during the neural stem cell differentiation process, which may potentially be used as label-free biophysical markers to monitor this process.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Cell Culture Techniques
  • Cell Differentiation*
  • Cell Membrane / physiology
  • Cytoplasm
  • Electric Capacitance
  • Electric Impedance
  • Electrophysiological Phenomena*
  • Gene Expression Profiling
  • Neural Stem Cells / cytology*
  • Neural Stem Cells / physiology*
  • Rats

Grants and funding

The authors would like to acknowledge financial support from the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program, Grant No. 2014CB744602 (JW), http://program.most.gov.cn/), the International Science & Technology Cooperation Program of China (MOST: 2011DFA31960 (ZC), http://program.most.gov.cn/), the Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61201077 (JC), 61431019 (JW) and 81261120561 (JW), http://program.most.gov.cn/), the Instrument Development Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (2015-2016 (JW), http://www.cas.ac.cn), and the UK Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council (BBSRC (ZC), http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/). Tianjin Weikai Bioeng Ltd. provided support in the form of salaries for authors [QL and HS], but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.