Tweezers

[Mavis Watts]

Optical tweezers (OT) have appeared being an important tool for manipulating single biological cells and doing superior biophysical/biomechanical characterizations. Unique advantages of using Tweezers for these characterizations contain non-contact force for cell manipulation, force decision as accurate as 100aN and amiability to liquid medium conditions. Their wide range of applications, such as taking foreign materials in to single cells, offering cells to specific places and selecting 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 breakthroughs. The near future trends of employing OT in individual cells, particularly in stem cell delivery, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, are prospected. More importantly, present limitations and future problems of OT for these new paradigms will also be featured in this review.