Optical tweezers: turning science into science-fiction
By Jason Jonathan Joseph

Like a tweezers grabs all those unflattering hairs and makes you feel beautiful and smooth, this technology of optical tweezers grabs little particles that make you ill and can make you feel well!

On Wednesday, Dr Patience Mthunzi, from the Council of Scientific and Industrial research in Edinburgh, Scotland, spoke about her amazing science-fiction like science of moving objects in space with only a laser. Originally from Soweto, she made her way to St. Andrews University in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she is the first South African to obtained her PhD in optical tweezing. Beam me up Scotty.

It is as simple as taking a tiny laser beam of about 0.1mm (a femtosecond laser) and using it to move microscopic objects up and down, and back and forward through space. Everything happens on a microscopic level. Just taking a tiny cell or atom, pricking a lil’ hole in it and either planting whatever other substance in it that you want to, or removing any unwanted cells from it. It is in this way that invitrogen fertilisation (making of test-tube babies) takes place, and also how new technology for treating cancerous cells is developing.

The transfection process of optical tweezers is basically just drilling a hole into cells and you can either implant a substance in it, or extract some unwanted substance from it. It is in that way that cancer cells can be treated inside the body. By identifying cancerous cells and trapping them in the beam of the optical tweezers, they can be removed from body. This whole process is great because it does not harm healthy cells or the body because there is no contact, and therefore no chance for infection.

According to Mthunzi, these tiny tools also have an impact on research into cures and treatment for Aids, rheumatoid arthritis and bone formation. Some of this science is more hectic than even the movies…