Full Length Research Paper

Perforate on CHO cell membranes induced by electromagnetic pulses irradiation observed by atomic force microscopy

Lihua Zeng¹, Changxu Zou², Jie Zhang¹, Xiaowu Wang¹, Xia Miao¹, Dongqing Ren¹, Yurong Li¹ and Guozhen Guo¹*

¹Department of Radiation Medicine Faculty of Preventive Medicine, Fourth Military Medical University, Changle west road 17, Xi’an 710032, China.

²Anatomy Department and K. K. Leung Brain Research Center, Fourth Military Medical University, Changle west road 17, Xi’an 710032, China.

*Corresponding author. E-mail: lzwei1998@gmail.com. or  guozhen@fmmu.edu.cn. Tel.: +86-29-84774873. Fax: +86-29-84774873.

Accepted 16 June, 2009

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) has been used to visualize the morphological change on the surface of Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell membranes before and after electromagnetic pulses (EMP) irradiation. The results show that there were different sizes and shapes of membrane perforate (width ranging from 0.39 - 0.66 μm; depth of 392.95 nm) after 200 pulses of EMP irradiation at 400 kV/m. The results suggested that EMP irradiation can directly cause CHO cell membranes to perforate. The numbers of cell membrane perforates increased with an increase in applied EMP field intensity and an increase in the number of EMP pulses. EMP induced membrane perforate may play a very important role in EMP biological effects.

Key words: Electromagnetic pulse (EMP), atomic force microscope, CHO cell, cell membrane.