Pore lifetimes in cell electroporation: Complex dark pores?

Abstract

We review some of the basic concepts and the possible pore structures associated with electroporation (EP) for times after electrical pulsing. We purposefully give only a short description of pore creation and subsequent evolution of pore populations, as these are adequately discussed in both reviews and original research reports. In contrast, post-pulse pore concepts have changed dramatically. For perspective we note that pores are not directly observed. Instead understanding of pores is based on inference from experiments and, increasingly, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. In the past decade concepts for post-pulse pores have changed significantly: The idea of pure lipidic transient pores (TPs) that exist for milliseconds or longer post-pulse has become inconsistent with MD results, which support TP lifetimes of only $\sim$100 ns. A typical large TP number during cell EP pulsing is of order $10^6$. In twenty MD-based TP lifetimes (2 us total), the TP number plummets to $\sim$0.001. In short, TPs vanish 2 us after a pulse ends, and cannot account for post-pulse behavior such as large and relatively non-specific ionic and molecular transport. Instead, an early conjecture of complex pores (CPs) with both lipidic and other molecule should be taken seriously. Indeed, in the past decade several experiments provide partial support for complex pores (CPs). Presently, CPs are "dark", in the sense that while some CP functions are known, little is known about their structure(s). There may be a wide range of lifetimes and permeabilities, not yet revealed by experiments. Like cosmology's dark matter, these unseen pores present us with an outstanding problem.