Electroporation-based applications in biotechnology

• We review four promising biotechnological applications of electroporation.
• Reversible electroporation is an efficient method for genetic transformation of microorganisms.
• Irreversible electroporation allows the inactivation of microbes and the extraction of biomolecules.
• Water release due to electroporation increases the efficiency of biomass drying.

Electroporation is already an established technique in several areas of medicine, but many of its biotechnological applications have only started to emerge; we review here some of the most promising. We outline electroporation as a phenomenon and then proceed to applications, first outlining the best established – the use of reversible electroporation for heritable genetic modification of microorganisms (electrotransformation), and then explore recent advances in applying electroporation for inactivation of microorganisms, extraction of biomolecules, and fast drying of biomass. Although these applications often aim to upscale to the industrial and/or clinical level, we also outline some important chip-scale applications of electroporation. We conclude our review with a discussion of the main challenges and future perspectives.