Femtosecond Fiber Laser Applying for Cell Fusion

Abstract

We developed an actively mode-locked fiber laser that can generate 295 fs pulses at 9.188 MHz repetition rate. We built up a laser-induced cell fusion, in which the developed femtosecond laser was used as the laser source for both optical tweezers mode and laser scalpel mode, and thus improving cost-effectiveness. The cell fusion system also used a transparent dielectrophoresis chip as the specimen stage to create and manipulate the pearl chain of two or multiple cells for facilitating the cell fusion processes. We successfully developed the first optical tweezers using femtosecond fiber laser operating at 1530 nm, which can trap and transport cells effectively. With this developed system, we obtained the laser-induced fusion of red cabbage protoplasts. We also proposed a experimental cell fusion procedure which allows precisely selective cell fusion at the single-cell level. Therefore, the developed system would benefit basic research in biotechnology and biomedicine.