Tweezers

[Mavis Watts]

Optical tweezers (OT) have appeared as an essential tool for influencing individual biological cells and doing superior biophysical/biomechanical characterizations. Unique advantages of using Tweezers for these characterizations contain non-contact force for cell manipulation, force resolution as accurate as 100aN and amiability to liquid medium surroundings. Their wide range of applications, such as carrying foreign materials into individual cells, giving cells to specific places and working cells in microfluidic systems, are reviewed in this article. New developments of OT for nanomechanical characterization of numerous biological cells are discussed in terms of both their theoretical and experimental developments. The near future trends of employing OT in single cells, particularly in stem cell delivery, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, are prospected. More to the point, current limitations and future challenges of OT for these new paradigms will also be featured in this review.