Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
fibers triggering a dramatic contraction of the entire cell within minutes of
fiber irradiation.
17
When a population of SFs is pharmacologically dissipated,
actin density flowed toward the other population as shown by image correla-
tion spectroscopy.
Nanosurgery can be very useful to researchers investigating the development
of the nervous system. During certain stages of neural development, trail-blazing
“pioneer” neurons migrate and provide chemical signals which are subsequently
used by migrating cells to extend their processes in the right direction. Nanosur-
gery could be used to eliminate pioneer neurons in order to determine exactly
how they influence cells in the nervous system.
FIGURE 6.1
Femtolaser nanosurgery of central and peripheral SFs. Negligible changes in cell area
occur after femtolaser disruption of a single central fiber (
top
); dramatic changes in cell area after
ablation of a single peripheral fiber (
bottom
). Left: low-magnification snapshots showing the outline
of the entire cell. Right: high-magnification zooms of the boxed regions that more clearly show
the severed SF. All images are overlays of mCherry-LifeAct fluorescence before ablation (
red
) and
30-min postablation (
green
). Scale bar for left and right panels = 10 and 20µm, respectively.
From
Tanner.
8
(For color version of this figure, the reader is referred to the online version of this topic)
