Optical Tweezers – Red Blood Cell Force Induced Rupture

In this video a red blood cell is captured between two traps and teared apart using the ‘Force Spectroscopy’ mode of the NanoTracker™ optical tweezers.
A red blood cell is captured using two individually steerable traps, indicated by the cross-hairs. Due to the focal shape of the optical trap the cell is aligned perpendicular to the field of view and its cross section is visible. Using the ‘Force Spectroscopy’ tool of the NanoTracker™ software the captured cell is elongated. Whereupon the green arrow indicates the direction and the distance of the optical traps movement. In the first half of the movie the distance between both traps is steadily increased until the moving trap looses contact with the cell. For the largest distance the trap stiffness is increased to a level, where the applied forces are high enough to rupture the red blood cell.

First the distance of elongation is increased before in the end the stiffness of the trap is also increased leading to a rupture event of the red blood cell.