Laser Nanosurgery
Ablation of actin stress fibers in cultured cells. Adapted from cover image of Med. Sciences 22 (6-7), 2006.
Originally built at EMBL in 2003, the Laser Nanosurgery platform was developed to perform cellular and subcellular ablation in living cells and organisms under fluorescence excitation. The system is available at IRB Barcelona since 2009. The combination of a pulsed UV laser, a laser scanning device and an optimized optical path for fluorescence excitation and diffraction limited beam focussing has brought many applications for the study of cellular processes in living cells. The system is versatile, includes a dedicated CW laser beam for combined FRAP and Nanosurgery, and performs very well in surface tissues as well as deeper into multicellular tissues.
Since 2012, the system is equipped with a retrofitted spinning disk unit for optical sectioning.
Known Applications
Ablation of actin stress fibers in cultured cells. Adapted from cover image of Traffic 6 (12), 2005.
Correlative Light to Electron Microscopy, enabled with laser engraving and etching of cell substrate. Adapted from Meth Cell Biol. 457 (3) 13, 2008.
Ablation of single cellular junctions in drosophila embryos (amnioserosa). Colombelli & Solon, Cell Tissue Res. 352 (1), 133-47 (2013).
Use of Laser ablation in multicellular tissues dynamics and morphogenesis.
Adapted from Colombelli & Solon, Cell Tissue Res. 352 (1), 133-47 (2013).
Technical Specifications of the instrument
