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Full Description
There are probably few people who do not dream of the good old times, when do ing science often meant fascination, excitement, even adventure. In our time, do ing science involves often technology and, perhaps, even business. But there are still niches where curiosity and fascination have their place. The subject of this book, technological as its title may sound, is one of the fortunate examples. It will report on lasers generating the coldest places in the Universe, and on table top laser microtools which can produce a heat "inferno" as it prevails in the interior of the Sun, or simulate, for specific plant cells, microgravity of the space around our plan et Earth. There will be some real surprises for the reader. The applications range from basic studies of the driving forces of cell division (and thus life) via genetic modification of cells (for example, for plant breeding) to medical applications such as blood cell analysis and finally in vitro fertilization. What are these instruments: laser microbeams and optical tweezers? Both are lasers coupled with a fluorescence microscope. The laser microbeam uses a pulsed ultraviolet laser. Light is focused, as well as possible, in space and time, in order to obtain extremely high light intensities - high enough to generate, for a very short instant, extremely hot spots which can be used to cut, fuse or perforate biological material.
Contents
Introduction: The history of using light as a working tool.- 1 From photons to the laser microtools.- 1.1 Light.- 1.2 Lasers: sources of peculiar light.- 1.3 Microscopes and cameras.- 1.4 Laser microbeams and optical tweezers.- 2 Why and how light can be used as a microtool.- 2.1 Pulsed laser microbeams.- 2.2 Interaction of pulsed lasers with biological matter.- 2.3 Interaction of optical tweezers with biological material.- 2.4 Light pressure: Some quantitative relationships.- 2.5 Gradient forces: Full control in three dimensions.- 2.6 Unprecedented accuracy and precision: Nanometers and piconewtons.- 3 From the first simple experiments to sophisticated applications of laser microtools.- 3.1 Microbeams in developmental biology.- 3.2 Intermezzo I: Cells and cellular organelles.- 3.3 Laser microbeam studies on unicellular organisms, cells and subcellular structures.- 3.4 Optical tweezers enter the stage.- 4 Mitosis, molecular motors and muscles: What laser microtools can teach us.- 4.1 Intermezzo II: Reproduction and motion.- 4.2 What drives cell division? Laser microtools help to find the answer.- 4.3 Molecular motors: True nanotechnology.- 5 DNA as a molecular individuum.- 5.1 The ultimate DNA analytics: Single molecules.- 5.2 Single molecule DNA reactions.- 5.3 Intermezzo III: Genes, chromosomes and genetic diseases.- 5.4 Laser microdissection of chromosomes.- 6 From biology to medicine.- 6.1 Laser microtools in plant cell biology.- 6.2 Microperforation of cell walls and cell membranes.- 6.3 From laser-induced cell fusion to antibodies and immunology.- 6.4 Towards medical diagnostics: From blood to cancer.- 6.5 Laser microbeam and optical tweezers in reproduction medicine.- A1 Geometrical optics.- A2 Ray optics: Lenses and image formation.- A3 Resolution of a microscope and focusing a laser.- A4 Light as a wave: Mathematical representation.- A5 Absorption, scattering and fluorescence.
