Use of electroporation to introduce biologically active foreign genes into primary rat hepatocytes

A method is described for introducing and expressing cloned genes in isolated hepatocytes. Primary rat hepatocytes isolated by collagenase perfusion were transfected in suspension with plasmid pSV2CAT by electroporation. Forty-eight hours later, soluble extracts from transfected hepatocytes showed chloramphenicol acetyltransferase activity comparable to that obtained in rat hepatoma cell line H4AzC2 by calcium phosphate or DEAE-dextran transfection. The latter two methods could not be used successfully for primary hepatocytes because of cytotoxicity of these reagents. This indicates that electroporation is a useful method to obtain transient expression of foreign genes in primary epithelial cells, such as rat hepatocytes, which are difficult to maintain in cell culture.