Note on the surface electric charges of living cells

Abstract

The movement of free living cells suspended in a fluid through which an electric current is passing towards one or other of the poles has been described by many observes. In almost every case the movement has been observed in thin films of fluid under a cover-glass mounted in the way usual for microscopical examination. The cells do not always all move in the same direction; some migrate towards the anode, others to the cathode, and Thornton found that in mixed suspensions of diatoms and amœbæ, or yeast cells and red blood corpuscles, the animal cells migrated to the anode, the vegetable cells to the cathode. He infers from this that animal and vegetable cells are oppositely electrified, the former being negative, the latter positive, to the fluid. It is obvious at the outset that there are exceptions to this generalisation, for Becholt describes a movement of bacteria towards the anode, the direction being reserved after agglutination. Dale and Lillie also have described movements of animal cells to the cathode, but Thornton points out with some justice that in these cases the cells were not in their normal habitat.