Optical Transfection
Optical Transfection
Last Updated on Tuesday, 20 July 2010 08:17 Written by Administrator Sunday, 27 June 2010 08:55
Optical Transfection is the process of introducing nucleic acids into cells using light. Typically, a laser is focussed to a diffraction limited spot (~1 µm diameter) using a high numerical aperture microscope objective. The plasma membrane of a cell is then exposed to this highly focussed light for a small amount of time (typically tens of milliseconds to seconds), generating a transient pore on the membrane. The generation of a photopore allows exogenous plasmid DNA, RNA, organic fluorophores, or larger objects such as semiconductor quantum nanodots to enter the cell. In this technique, one cell at a time is treated, making it particularly useful for single cell analysis.
This technique was first demonstrated in 1984 by Tsukakoshi et al., who used a frequency tripled Nd:YAG to generate stable and transient transfection of normal rat kidney cells[1]. Since this time, the optical transfection of a host of mammalian cell types has been demonstrated using a variety of laser sources, including the 405 nm continuous wave (cw) , 488 nm cw , or pulsed sources such as the 800 nm femtosecond pulsed Ti:Sapphire light.
