Electric healing

Wounds have electrical fields that help cells to flood into and heal them, according to Min Zhao (University of Aberdeen, UK), Josef Penninger (Institute of Molecular Biotechnology, Vienna, Austria), and colleagues.

For over a decade, Zhao has been studying how cells migrate in response to electrical fields. It has been a lonely field, however. Electricity does not fit easily into the gene–protein paradigm of cellular control, and the field's reputation was tainted by some poorly controlled experiments conducted early in the 20th century.

Now, Zhao and colleagues have confirmed claims first made more than 150 years ago that wounds generate electrical fields. There is normally a potential difference between basal tissue layers and apical skin surface—a difference generated by transport of Cl⁻ ions outwards and Na⁺ ions inwards. But this potential...