MOSFET-based pulse power supply for bacterial transformation

In this paper, a MOSFET-based pulsed power supply capable of supplying square pulses of up to 3000 V and widths from nanoseconds to milliseconds is presented and used for an investigation into electroporation-mediated delivery of a plasmid DNA molecule into the pathogenic bacterium Escherichia coli O157:H7. It was concluded that increasing the electric field strength and pulse amplitude resulted in an increase in the number of transformants. However, increasing the number of pulses had the effect of reducing the number of transformants. In all the experiments, the number of calls that were inactivated by the exposure to the pulsed electric field were also measured. Index Terms--Bacterial transformation, DNA transfusion, electroporation, Escherichia coli.