Optical tweezers and microfluidics for bacterial cell analysis - Viability testing

This talk will be an introduction to the optical tweezer system that we have set up in CBCB. The optical tweezer uses a 1070 nm wavelength laser to trap cells, so that they can be manipulated and moved easily into microfluidics channel for single cell analysis and growth measurements. The obvious question to ask when we use lasers on bacterial cells is how the laser effects the viability of the cells. Some preliminary results of experiments to look at the effect of the tweezer on cell growth rates will be presented. A plasmid system created by Newcastle universities 2016 iGem team has also been used to look at whether localised heating of the cells is caused by the laser.