Regensburg 2007 – scientific programme
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 20: Novel Methods
BP 20.1: Talk
Wednesday, March 28, 2007, 17:30–17:45, H43
The optical cell rotator: An approach to single cell tomography. — •Moritz Kreysing1, Anatol Fritsch1, Tobias Kiessling1, Jochen Guck2, and Josef Käs1 — 1Institute for Soft Matter Physics, Universität Leipzig, Linnéstr. 5, 04103 Leipzig — 2University of Cambridge, Department of Physics, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge, CB3 0HE, GB
Although optical trapping techniques have become essential in the field of micromanipulation of biological samples during the last decades, all related attempts to control the orientation of biological cells perpendicular to the optical axis of a microscope were unsatisfactory.
With our work we present for the first time a laser tool to hold, continually rotate and stably orient individual biological cells. The so called "optical cell rotator" is based on a dual beam laser trap but due to a modified beam geometry extended by a potential for the cells' orientation. The generation of this potential could be achieved by the excitation of high order modes in a polarization-maintaining optical fiber resulting in a steadily transported asymmetric beam profile.
Experiments with erythrocytes and HL60 cells clearly show that suspended cells orient one-to-one correlated to a rotation of this laser beam almost instantaneously and can thus be observed under any angle. Our method combined with confocal laser microscopy and modern tomography software promises imaging of individual suspended cells and even separated cell organelles with isotropic resolution.