On the measurement of entropy production in living cells under an alternating electric field

This commentary is on the concept used by Ding and Luo (2013) tomeasure the rate of entropyproduction innormal cell and cancerous cell lines under an alternating electric field. The authors placed the 96-well plate containing the cells (incubated for 60min in an incubator at 37 C) in the electric field for 300 s and recorded the change of temperature of cells and culture medium TF(t) (t1⁄4 0–300 s) with a transducer. The control group was placed in the same apparatus without electric field, and the change of temperature TC(t), was also recorded. The heat transfer rates of _ QC and _ QF without and with alternating electric fields (AEFs), respectively, from the cell to outward are calculated from Fourier’s law of heat conduction. The contribution of heat transfer from the medium was obtained and subtracted to determine the net heat transfer with or without (AEFs) from the cell only. The entropy change of a cell with or without AEFs is expressed by the entropy balance: