A study on cell motility mechanism using a cell manipulation system with optical tweezers

Abstract

This paper presents a novel methodology to investigate the cell motility mechanism during cell migration using a cell manipulation system with optical tweezers. A specially designed microbeads loaded with chemoattractant, which are trapped by optical tweezers, release chemoattractant molecules into liquid environment to induce cell migration. A polystyrene bead is trapped and placed in front of the cell as a barrier bead. When the cell comes into contact with the bead, the bead has an offset with respect to the trap center. This offset can be used to determine the protrusion force of the cell. Experiments are performed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.