Internalisation of biophotonic techniques : transfection, injection and thermometry

Abstract

Single cell manipulation can offer great insights into the whole of an organism, the rapidly growing -omics fields are illustrating the heterogeneity that can be found within cell populations and where these subtle differences may be exploited, from fundamental knowledge to diagnostics and therapeutics. The cutting edge of this single cell work requires the application of interdisciplinary research to fully exploit the boundaries being pushed. Biophotonics is one such body of interdisciplinary research, employing light to manipulate biological samples. This work seeks to make use biophotonic techniques as analogues for conventional biological methods. High throughput raster scan photoporation is utilised for attempted transfection, multiple trap optical tweezers are used in an attempt to optically drive mechanical injection of cells and the thermal impact of these optical tweezers, which require high energy densities to confine particles, is tested, via the exploitation of the temperature sensitive emission of quantum dot nanoparticles.