Studying collective migration of cells is currently of considerable interest in biology and medicine leading to possibility of novel diagnosis and treatments. Some cells are highly sensitive to direct laser exposure, which may influence their behavior or even cause photodamage. In addition, manual manipulation of cells is time consuming making it hard to carry out systematic studies that are properly timed to exhibit the desired motility. This video demonstrates an automated indirect planning approach for precise, collision free, indirect manipulation of cells with irregular, dynamically changing shapes using Optical Tweezers (OT). The first portion of the video shows collective migration of Dictyostelium cells on a glass surface. The later portion of the video shows a triplet pusher that is automatically manipulating an individual Dictyostelium cell to arrange it in a desired position and orientation. In the triplet pusher formation, two beads are directly trapped by laser and an intermediate bead (which is not directly trapped by laser) is used to ensure zero exposure of laser to the cell.
Post time: Jul-09-2017