5-3.1.1(b). Applications
Electroporation is widely used in many areas of molecular biology and in medical field. Some applications of electroporation include:

• DNA transfection or transformation

Electroporation is mainly used in DNA transfection/transformation which involves introduction of foreign DNA into the host cell (animal, bacterial or plant cell).

• Direct transfer of plasmids between cells

It involves the incubation of bacterial cells containing a plasmid with another strain lacking plasmids but containing some other desirable features. The voltage of electroporation creates pores, allowing the transfer of plasmids from one cell to another. This type of transfer may also be performed between species. As a result, a large number of plasmids may be grown in rapidly dividing bacterial colonies and transferred to yeast cells by electroporation.

• Gene transfer to a wide range of tissues

Electroporation can be performed in vivo for more efficient gene transfer in a wide range of tissues like skin, muscle, lung, kidney, liver, artery, brain, cornea etc. It avoids the vector-specific immune-responses that are achieved with recombinant viral vectors and thus are promising in clinical applications.

5-3.1.1(c). Advantages

• It is highly versatile and effective for nearly all cell types and species.
  
  
• It is highly efficient method as majority of cells take in the target DNA molecule.
  
  
• It can be performed at a small scale and onlya small amount of DNA is required as compared to other methods.

5-3.1.1(d). Disadvantages

• Cell damage is one of the limitations of this method caused by irregular intensity pulses resulting in too large pores which fail to close after membrane discharge.
  
  
• Another limitation is the non-specific transport which may result in an ion imbalance causing improper cell function and cell death.