Dielectrophoretic Traps for Cell Manipulation

One of the goals of biology for the next fifty years is to understand how cells work. This fundamentally requires a diverse set of approaches for performing measurements on cells in order to extract information from them. Manipulating the physical location and organization of cells or other biologically important particles is an important part in this endeavor. Apart from the fact that cell function is tied to their three-dimensional organization, one would like ways to grab onto and position cells. This lets us build up controlled multicellular aggregates, investigate the mechanical properties of cells, the binding properties of their surface proteins, and additionally provides a way to move cells around. In short, it provides physical access to cells that our fingers cannot grasp.