Table 1.

Comparison of non-viral methods commonly used to transfect mammalian neurons.

Non-viral method	Model		Maximal efficiency		Cell survival	References
	Precursors	Post-mitotic cells	DNA plasmids	RNAi
Ca2+phosphate/DNA co-precipitation		erHCn	Typically between 1 and 5%; 12 and 27% under highly controlled conditions	Efficient %n.c.	%n.c.	Goetze et al., 2004
Lipofection		nmCGn	Effective (≥50% Knock-down)	%n.c.	%n.c.	Butcher et al., 2009
		erHCn/erCn	20–25% / 25–30%a	–	100%b	Ohki et al., 2001; Dalby et al., 2004
		erHCn	–	73%c	89–96%	Tonges et al., 2006
Biolistics			Typically around 2%, rarely reaches 10% in cultured neurons, up to 34% in slice culture	–	%n.c.	Karra and Dahm, 2010
		nr/arDRGn/ SCGn	5%	–	%n.c.	Dib-Hajj et al., 2009
Sonoporation		DRGn	31%		35%	Lin et al., 2010
Electroporation “Nucleofection”		nr/ar/amDRGn/SCGn	5–20%	Efficient	%n.c.	Dib-Hajj et al., 2009
		ecDRGn			37%	Martinez and Hollenbeck, 2003
	mNSC		88%	Efficient >50%	78%	Bertram et al., 2012d
	hNPCs		10–20%		44%	Dieterlen et al., 2009
		arDRGn/erDRGn/ecDRGn/SCGn/ erHCn	39–42%		%n.c.	Chadborn et al., 2006; Jones et al., 2006; MacGillavry et al., 2009; Ketschek and Gallo, 2010; McCall et al., 2012; Pristera et al., 2012; Kirton et al., 2013

erHCn, embryonic rat hippocampal neurons; hNPCs, human neural progenitor cells; NSC, neural stem cells; CGns, cerebellar granule neurons; SCGn, superior cervical ganglion neurons. amDRGn, adult Mouse DRGn; emDRGn, embryonic mouse DRGn; arDRGn, adult Rat DRGn; nrDRGn, neonatal rat DRGn; ecDRGn, embryonic chick DRGn; %n.c., percent not communicated.

^aLipofectamine 2000™.

^bThe authors state that 100% of the cells in transfected cultures are viable.

^cStearyl-R8.

^dNucleofector® 4D.