Nanosized voltmeter enables cellular-wide electric field mapping

Previously, all biological measurements of intracellular electric fields (E fields), using voltage dyes or patch/ voltage clamps, were confined to cellular membranes, which account for, 0.1% of the total cellular volume. These membrane- dependent techniques also frequently require lengthy calibration steps for each cell or cell type measured. A new 30- nm photonic voltmeter'', 1000- fold smaller than existing voltmeters, enables, to our knowledge, the. rst complete three- dimensional E field profiling throughout the entire volume of living cells. These nanodevices are calibrated externally and then applied for E field determinations inside any live cell or cellular compartment, with no further calibration steps. The results indicate that the E fields from the mitochondrial membranes penetrate much deeper into the cytosol than previously estimated, indicating that, electrically, the cytoplasm cannot be described as a simple homogeneous solution, as often approximated, but should rather be thought of as a complex, heterogeneous hydrogel, with distinct microdomains.