Delivery of plasmid DNA into dental tissues of developing rat teeth by electroporation.

Gene transfer by electroporation is a versatile technique that can effectively deliver DNA or RNA into almost all types of cells or tissues. As a widely used nonviral approach, electroporation possesses several advantages over viral methods including non-immunogenicity and local tissue transfection. We have successfully transferred plasmid DNA and siRNA into the dental tissues of rat developing and unerupted molars using electroporation. This chapter presents a step-by-step electroporation method for transferring plasmid DNA into dental tissues. The parameters and factors affecting transfection efficiency are discussed in Subheading 4 of the chapter for aiding others in designing their experimental protocols. This dental tissue transfection technique provides a useful tool to overexpress the genes of interest to study their functions in tooth development and eruption. It can be used to deliver nucleic acids into dental tissues for development of gene-based therapies to treat dental disorders.