Nanoprocessing of subcellular targets using femtosecond laser pulses

Surgical applications of femtosecond lasers

“…Femtosecond laser ablation has also selectively disrupted individual plastids in plant tissue [86] and mitochondria in HeLa [87] and capillary endothelial [36] cells. In summary, subcellular femtosecond laser ablation of chromosomes and organelles results in experimentally-straightforward dissections of unprecedented precision but have yet to move beyond the proof-of-principle phase to become common tools in cell biology [88][89][90][91].…”

“…After severing the dynamic F-actin network by femtosecond laser pulses, both actin and E-cadherin, a spot adherent junction (SAJ) protein, redistribute away from the ablation point, indicating that the actin network restrains the mobility of SAJs by a tether mechanism [97]. A number of reviews cover femtosecond laser ablation of the cytoskeleton, usually in combination with other cell biology techniques for characterizing cell mechanics [91,[98][99][100][101].…”

Submicron foaming in gelatine by nanosecond and femtosecond pulsed laser irradiation

“…Recently, fs ablation has been adapted as a biological tool to manipulate structures and chemistry on a microscopic scale [6][7][8][9]. Focusing fs laser pulses into biological media leads to optical breakdown and generation of a microplasma.…”

“…Because of the nonlinear nature of plasma formation very fine and highly localized laser effects can be induced while minimizing thermal and mechanical damage to the surrounding material. For fs pulses, the pulse energy threshold for material modification is reduced by some orders of magnitude compared with ns or ps pulses [7][8][9].…”

Influence of location-dependent protuberance damage on cell viability

“…Many experiments also used the same method to transfect living cells [18][19][20] . Maxwell et al [21] focused the laser beam at the top surface of the cell and irradiated the apical cell membrane, the intensity of fluorescent signal from the nucleus immediately increased by a factor of ten as the ethidium bromide rapidly diffused into the cell through the incision in the surface membrane. Secondly, we consider the generation of diffusing free radical or other reactive oxygen species one of the reasons in triggering the Ca 2+ response.…”