Quantitative Investigation for the Dielectrophoretic Effect of Fluorescent Dyes at Single-Cell Resolution

Abstract

Most of the microscopy-based, quantitative assays rely on fluorescent dyes. In this study, we investigated the impact of fluorescent dyes on the dielectrophoretic response of the mammalian cells. The dielectrophoretic measurements were performed to quantify whether the fluorescent dyes alter the dielectrophoretic properties of the cells at single-cell resolution. Our results present that when 10 V _pp electric field is applied, the fluorescent-labeled cells experienced the crossover frequency at 8–10 kHz, whereas the label-free cells exhibited at 16–18 kHz.