Abstract
Much of the functionality of multicellular systems arises from the spatial organization and dynamic behaviours within and between cells. Current single-cell genomic methods only provide a transcriptional ‘snapshot’ of individual cells. The real-time analysis and perturbation of living cells would generate a step change in single-cell analysis. Here we describe minimally invasive nanotweezers that can be spatially controlled to extract samples from living cells with single-molecule precision. They consist of two closely spaced electrodes with gaps as small as 10–20 nm, which can be used for the dielectrophoretic trapping of DNA and proteins. Aside from trapping single molecules, we also extract nucleic acids for gene expression analysis from living cells without affecting their viability. Finally, we report on the trapping and extraction of a single mitochondrion. This work bridges the gap between single-molecule/organelle manipulation and cell biology and can ultimately enable a better understanding of living cells.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 80-88 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Nature Nanotechnology |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jan 1 2019 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:J.B.E. has been funded in part by an ERC starting (NanoP) and consolidator (NanoPD) investigator grant. A.P.I. and J.B.E. acknowledge support from EPSRC grant EP/ P011985/1 and BBSRC grant BB/R022429/1. A.P.I. acknowledges IC Research Fellowship funding. We thank B. Akpinar for helping with TEM and EDX spectroscopy and S. Rothery for helping with the cell viability studies. A.B. and S.-H.O. acknowledge support from the US National Science Foundation (NSF ECCS no. 1610333). M.J.D. is supported by a Wellcome Trust Clinical Postdoctoral Fellowship (106713/Z/14/Z) and J.T.K. received funding from an ERC starting grant (282430).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.