Recent Developments in Electrotaxis Assays

Significance: A wide range of cell types can migrate in response to physiological or externally applied direct current electric field (dcEF), a process termed electrotaxis. In particular, electrotaxis of epithelial cells to wound-generated dcEF for mediating wound healing is a well-accepted mechanism. In addition, various immune cells have been demonstrated to undergo electrotaxis, suggesting a link between electrotaxis and inflammatory responses in wound healing. Electrotaxis research will generate important insight into the electrical guiding mechanism for cell migration thereby providing the scientific basis to further develop clinical applications for wound care. Development of advanced electrotaxis assays will critically enable in-depth experimental electrotaxis studies in vitro. Recent Advances: Recently, a number of new electrotaxis assays or new uses of previously developed assays for electrotaxis studies have been reported. These new developments provide improved solutions for experimental throughput, configuration of three-dimensional cell migration environments and coexisting guiding signals, measurements of collective electrotactic cell migration, and sorting electrotactic populations. Critical Issues: These new developments face the challenge of playing a more important role to better understand the biological mechanisms underlying electrotaxis, in addition to making a stronger impact on relevant applications. Future Directions: On one hand, specific electrotaxis assays should be further developed to improve its function and tested for a broader range of experimental conditions and electrotactic populations. On the other hand, joint efforts among electrotaxis researchers are needed to integrate the unique features of specific electrotaxis assays, allowing more advanced and efficient electrotaxis analyses to answer both basic science and clinical questions.