Researchers use electric fields to detect elderly cells

Researchers from the Tokyo Metropolitan University created a new way to say “elderly” human cells other than young people using electric fields. While basic indicators have been found for these “aging” cells, current methods require biochemical “labels” that are difficult to apply and influence the cells themselves, making them difficult to study. The new method is without label and less detrimental. The group aims to differentiate the method, extending it to other cell types.

Aging starts at the cellular level. As we age, age or “aging” cells accumulate in our body. Not only have these cells lose much of their original function, but they continue to emit inflammation compounds. There is an increasing set of evidence of how they play a role in age -related conditions, such as arterial sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease and type 2 diabetes.

To understand and deal with such diseases, scientists need to deal with how aging cells affect our physiology. Of course, this begins with the detection of our cells is aging and which is not. Unfortunately, existing methods are based on selective “labeling”, e.g. Attaching a fluorescent molecule to specific compounds that are known to exist in older cells. Not only this time -consuming and complex, but the process itself can change the properties of the same thing that scientists want to study.

To achieve this, a group led by Assistant Professor Ipei Yagi from the Tokyo Metropolitan University has come up with a completely different approach to identifying aging cells. Instead of chemical labels, they put cells under an alternating electric field. This causes a light rearrangement of the load, where one end of the cell is more positively charged than the other. When the electric field is not uniform above space, the cell migrates. In the case of an alternating field, the cell wanders backwards and forward between the electrodes. As the frequency of the field changes, the cell movement changes significantly to a value known as the cut frequency. The method, known as FM-DEP, aims to characterize the type of cell by measuring this value.

The group focused on its efforts on human skin fibroblasts, a significant part of the connective tissue on the skin. When they looked at the aging cells against the younger ones, they found that there was a strong difference in their cut frequencies. These changes come from changes in adipose (lipid) molecules that make up the cell membrane. It is important that FM-DEP is fast, easy to apply and label without label.

The new method is not only a convenient tool for aging research, but it can see the application in regenerative medicine and drug control. The group hopes to also apply FM-DEP to other cell types as a flexible new approach to cell identification.

This project was supported by JSPS Kakenhi Grant Numbers JP23K28453 and JP23KK0260.