Caging and Transportation of Biological Cells using Optical Tweezers

This paper proposes a novel micro-manipulation technique for caging and transportation of cells using optical tweezers. A cage is first formed by several optically trapped micro-particles around a target cell, and robotic stage control is then utilized to move the caged cell to a region. This paper thus offers an optical manipulation technique for cell manipulation, in which the cells are manipulated without being trapped directly by using laser beams. Also, in contrast to other grasping-based control approaches, the cage formed by optically trapped micro-particles only bounds the mobility of the cell without strictly immobilizing it. Therefore, it requires less stringent condition than that of maintaining the stability of the grasps during manipulation. The robotic stage's dynamics is considered, and the stability of the control system is investigated. An experiment on caging and transportation of a yeast cell is then performed to show the feasibility of the control technique.