Application of optical tweezers using DOE and SLM to control of beads with information-DNA for photonic DNA computing

Abstract

We have proposed photonic DNA computing as a new parallel computing paradigm, in which optical techniques are used to manipulate information-coded DNA. In this paper, we present a parallel transportation of multiple beads bound with hairpin-structure DNA using a dynamic optical tweezers system which combines a spatial light modulator (SLM) with a diffractive optical element (DOE). This system provides and effective method for parallel manipulations of DNA-bound beads at multiple positions. In the experiments, three 2.8-μm-diameter beads bound with hairpin DNA were trapped and transported in 1 μm of step by switching of the SLM patterns. The results demonstrate that the dynamic holographic optical tweezers system with combination of the DOE and the SLM is useful in spatially parallel processing required for photonic DNA computing.