Overview of laser microbeam applications as related to antibody targeting.

This chapter reviews several techniques which combine the use of laser microbeams with antibodies to study molecular and cellular biology. An overview of the basic properties of lasers and their integration with microscopes and computers is provided. Biophysical applications, such as fluorescence recovery after photobleaching to measure molecular mobility and fluorescence resonance energy transfer to measure molecular distances, as well as ablative applications for the selective inactivation of proteins or the selective killing of cells are described. Other techniques, such as optical trapping, that do not rely on the interaction of the laser with the targeting antibody, are also discussed.