Experimental Study of Entropy Production in Cells under Alternating Electric Field

We put forward a new method for measuring the entropy production in the living cell. It involves heating the sample by alternating the electric field and recording the outward heat flow. The entropy production in a normal cell MCF10A and a cancerous cell MDA-MB-231 were measured and compared. The results show that the method is effective for the entropy measurement of a living organism. The scaled electro-induced entropy production rate (SEEP) of MDA-MB-231 monotonically increases with the electric field strength at 5–40 V/cm. While that of MCF10A changes non-monotonically and there exists a peak at 5–30 V/cm. The electro-induced entropy production ratio (EEPR) is smaller than 1 in a large range of field strengths, from 5 to 25 V/cm, which reveals that under 5–25 V/cm electric field exposure, the direction of the entropy flow may be changed from normal tissue to cancerous cells. We present a facile and effective strategy for experimentally investigating the thermodynamic properties of the cell and give a deeper insight into the physical difference between normal and cancerous cells under electric field exposure.