A cost-effective approach to microporate mammalian cells with the Neon Transfection System.

Electroporation is one of the most efficient nonviral methods for transferring exogenous DNA into mammalian cells. However, the relatively high costs of electroporation kits and reagents temper the routine use of this fast and easy to perform technique in many laboratories. Several years ago, a new flexible and easy to operate electroporation device was launched under the name Neon Transfection System. This device uses specialized pipette tips containing gold-plated electrodes as electroporation chamber. Here we report a protocol to regenerate these expensive tips as well as some other Neon kit accessories, thereby reducing the cost of electroporation at least 10-fold.