Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Polymers and Membranes, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland.
Lab Chip. 2010 Sep 7;10(17):2235-41. doi: 10.1039/c004659k. Epub 2010 Jul 27.
Biological cells continuously change shape allowing essential functions such as cell motility, vesicle-mediated release/uptake of soluble and membrane components or nanotube-mediated cell-cell communications. Here we use single cell micromanipulation to induce functional changes of cell shape for nanobiotechnological applications. Optical tweezers are focused on the plasma membrane of living cells to pull membrane nanotubes of approximately 200 nanometre diameters and 100 micrometre lengths. Upon switching off the laser tweezer membrane nanotubes relax back to the cell surface. Single-exponential relaxation times deliver local mechanical properties of cells' plasma membrane. Nanotubes pulled beyond 100 micrometre tear off and form micrometre-sized vesicles carrying functional membrane receptors and cytoplasmic signaling components. Membrane nanotubes from one cell can be contacted to adjacent cells forming via connexins intercellular electrical connections within seconds in all directions. Our method opens broad applications for multiplexing single-cell analytics to submicrometer/subfemtoliter ranges and for creating artificial intercellular signaling networks, both not attainable by current methodologies.
生物细胞不断改变形状，从而实现细胞运动、囊泡介导的可溶性和膜成分的释放/摄取或纳米管介导的细胞间通讯等基本功能。在这里，我们使用单细胞微操作来诱导细胞形状的功能变化，以应用于纳米生物技术。光学镊子聚焦于活细胞的质膜，以拉动直径约 200 纳米、长度为 100 微米的膜纳米管。当激光镊子关闭时，膜纳米管会恢复到细胞表面。单指数松弛时间提供了细胞质膜的局部力学特性。拉伸超过 100 微米的纳米管会撕裂并形成携带功能膜受体和细胞质信号成分的微米级小泡。来自一个细胞的膜纳米管可以与相邻细胞接触，通过连接蛋白在各个方向上在几秒钟内形成细胞间电连接。我们的方法为单细胞分析的多路复用开辟了广阔的应用范围，可达到亚微米/亚皮升范围，并可创建人工细胞间信号网络，而这是当前方法无法实现的。
