Tele-Robotic Platform for Dexterous Optical Single-Cell Manipulation.

Edison Gerena,Sinan Haliyo,Stéphane Régnier,Akshay Molawade,Youen Vitry,Florent Legendre

doi:10.3390/mi10100677

Abstract

Single-cell manipulation is considered a key technology in biomedical research. However, the lack of intuitive and effective systems makes this technology less accessible. We propose a new tele–robotic solution for dexterous cell manipulation through optical tweezers. A slave-device consists of a combination of robot-assisted stages and a high-speed multi-trap technique. It allows for the manipulation of more than 15 optical traps in a large workspace with nanometric resolution. A master-device (6+1 degree of freedom (DoF)) is employed to control the 3D position of optical traps in different arrangements for specific purposes. Precision and efficiency studies are carried out with trajectory control tasks. Three state-of-the-art experiments were performed to verify the efficiency of the proposed platform. First, the reliable 3D rotation of a cell is demonstrated. Secondly, a six-DoF teleoperated optical-robot is used to transport a cluster of cells. Finally, a single-cell is dexterously manipulated through an optical-robot with a fork end-effector. Results illustrate the capability to perform complex tasks in efficient and intuitive ways, opening possibilities for new biomedical applications.

Highlights

Dexterous manipulation of single-cells offers many possible applications in cellular surgery, mechanobiology, tissue engineering, and biophysics
Micromachines 2019, 10, 677 (DoF), immersion, and flexibility are essential characteristics of an efficient micro-manipulator. Based on all these observations, we propose a teleoperated optical-micromanipulation platform for direct and indirect single-cell dexterous manipulation
Significant efforts have been made toward achieving 3D cell orientation control using holographic optical tweezers (HOT) [12,31,32,33]

Summary

Introduction

Dexterous manipulation of single-cells offers many possible applications in cellular surgery, mechanobiology, tissue engineering, and biophysics. Recent breakthroughs in biotechnology are rising the demand for complex single-cell operation techniques such as cell isolation, 3D orientation, and cell-injection. Nowadays, those tasks are usually performed using simple three-axis cartesian robots consisting of motor-driven micromanipulators with prismatic joints and equipped with micro-pipettes or micro-grippers as end-effectors. Like the rotation of a cell, are proven to be quite time-consuming and challenging due to the lack of dexterity of those micromanipulators and their control interfaces. Those devices have a steep learning curve

Methods

Results

Conclusion