I arrived at my internship (formally) for the first time on Friday. I was introduced to potential customers of Applied Biophysics' ECIS technology. I jumped in on their sales meeting and was instantly immersed in the complexity of the product. Through the next three hours, my brain churned as it tried to translate an incredible amount of technical terms into English. It wasn't easy to understand, but the brilliant people surrounding me seemed very enthused about new and altered features of the latest electrode arrays and ECIS graphing software. Both the clients and my mentors generously took a bit their time to catch me up to speed on the generalities of the company's history, the ECIS instrument, and software system. 

A major component of Applied Biophysics' product line are its different types of arrays and assays. An array is essentially a plastic slide with indentations in which cultured cells are placed. On the undersurface of the indentations are electrodes made of a thin layer of gold. Gold is a good conductor, and can therefore send an indirect, specified pulse of AC current to the cells. The AC current is able to be carried through the leads to the array, and back to the ECIS instrument. As the number of cells in each well multiplies, they cause less current to be transmitted to the ECIS instrument. This decrease in measure of current is called Impedance (Z). In the meeting, a new, more statistically accurate 96 well plate array was featured. 

I also learned the about different applications of the ECIS technology. Wound healing was one of the most interesting ability of ECIS. The cells in the array are sent a current of the highest voltage for a few seconds and are injured, but can recover. This leaves the cells permeable to otherwise impermeable substances, such as DNA or RNA. This method of cell wounding is preferred over manual wounding because it is precise, allows the researcher to deduce quantitative data, and does not remove necessary cell proteins. Along with this application is the idea of the "electric fence". The electric fence uses high voltage AC current to kill cells on the electrode. By killing these cells off, researchers are able to measure and observe the rate cell migration into that empty space.