Development and Installation of a Modified and Automated Trans-epithelial Electrical Resistance Measuring Device

Trans-epithelial electrical resistance (TEER) is a widely accepted technique to monitor the integrity of tight junction proteins and barrier function of epithelial cells, yet it is a highly variable, costly, and labor-intensive experiment. In order to increase data quality, decrease experiment cost, and decrease user time, we developed a novel automated TEER measuring device. The device was created by adding a control module and a relay module to an existing manual electrical volt ohm meter (EVOM2) from World Precision Instruments Inc. This modified device is capable of cycling through 12 electrodes by collecting measurements every 5 s for 1 min in a sequential order. The system can be customized to collect measurements as often as every 12 min until data collection is stopped, allowing for multiday TEER experiments. Operational, performance, and installation qualification tests with phosphate-buffered saline (pH 7.4) show that the automated TEER device performs accurately and with less variations in measurements when compared to manual TEER experiments. Additionally, the automated TEER device was tested in cell-based assays with intestinal porcine enterocyte cells (IPEC-J2). IPEC-J2 cells were cultured in the presence of 100 μM calcium butyrate with and without treatment of lipopolysaccharide. Results from the automated TEER device were analogous to manually collected TEER data, indicating that the novel automated TEER measuring device is a viable alternative to the time-consuming and costly manual TEER procedure. The developed system allows for increased throughput of TEER experiments, decreased time for labor and lab personnel, and increased data quality.