Designing for BLAT
by
David J. N. Wall
Department of Mathematics and Statistics

Biological Lysing Application Technology (BLAT) has many uses. It is based on the concept of electro-permeabilization which is utilised in applications such as water purification devices using electricity, electroporation and electrofusion of biological cells.

The extent of mathematical analysis for electro-permeabilization of biological cells has thus far been constrained to spherical models. In this talk, the spherical model is extended to a prolate spheroidal balloon model, which is considered more representative of many real cells under actual field conditions.

It will be shown that the size dependence of the dielectric breakdown of the spheroidal cells can be eliminated. This also reduces the dependence of the breakdown on the eccentricity of the spheroidal cells over a range of shapes. It will be deduced that needle shaped cells will have dielectric breakdown at higher applied fields than fatter ones.

http://web.math.canterbury.ac.nz/~mathdjw/

Date received: June 2, 1999

Copyright © 1999 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # cacc-32.