Precision Assembly of Complex Cellular Microenvironments using Holographic Optical Tweezers

• DOI: 10.1038/srep08577
• Publication Date: 2015-02-26T10:08:43Z
• Authors: Glen R. Kirkham; Emily Britchford; Thomas Upton; James Ware; Graham M. Gibson; Yannick Devaud; Martin Ehrbar; Miles Padgett; Stephanie Allen; Lee D. Buttery; Kevin Shakesheff
• Keywords: Multicellular organism; Bespoke; Tweezers

Abstract The accurate study of cellular microenvironments is limited by the lack technologies that can manipulate cells in 3D at a sufficiently small length scale. ability to build and multicellular microscopic structures will facilitate more detailed understanding function fields such as developmental stem cell biology. We present holographic optical tweezers based technology accurately generate bespoke micro-architectures. Using embryonic cells, varying geometries were created stabilized using hydrogels cell-cell adhesion methods. Control chemical was achieved temporal release specific factors from polymer microparticles positioned within these constructs. Complex co-culture micro-environmental analogues also generated reproduce found adult niches. application tweezers-based micromanipulation enable novel insights into biological allowing researchers form complex architectures with sub-micron precision matrices molecules.