Individual cells have been made to act like tiny lasers, allowing them to be monitored more accurately. Making cells shoot laser beams may sound fantastical, says Matjaz Humar of Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but the techniques are surprisingly straightforward. "It's actually super-easy." Humar and his colleagues developed three ways to get cells to emit visible light. The first involved injecting each one with a tiny oil droplet - this formed an optical cavity in the cell that could be filled with fluorescent dye. When a light pulse was shone onto the cavity, the dye atoms entered an excited state, emitting light.
展开▼
