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Alignment of biological microparticles by a polarized laser beam

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Abstract

The optical alignment of biological samples is of great relevance to microspectrometry and to the micromanipulation of single particles. Recently, Bayoudh et al. (J. Mod. Opt. 50:1581–1590, 2003) have shown that isolated, disk-shaped chloroplasts can be aligned in a controlled manner using an in-plane-polarized Gaussian beam trap, and suggested that this is due to their nonspherical shape. Here we demonstrate that the orientation of various micrometer-sized isolated biological particles, trapped by optical tweezers, can be altered in a controlled way by changing the plane of linear polarization of the tweezers. In addition to chloroplasts, we show that subchloroplast particles of small size and irregular overall shape, aggregated photosynthetic light-harvesting protein complexes as well as chromosomes can be oriented with the linearly polarized beam of the tweezers. By using a laser scanning confocal microscope equipped with a differential polarization attachment, we also measured the birefringence of magnetically oriented granal chloroplasts, and found that they exhibit strong birefringence with large local variations, which appears to originate from stacked membranes. The size and sign of the birefringence are such that the resulting anisotropic interaction with the linearly polarized laser beam significantly contributes to the torque orienting the chloroplasts.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by grants from the Hungarian Research Fund (OTKA T42696, T034188, T034393 and T046747) and from EU-FP6 (ATOM3D/508952 and MCRTN/INTRO2 505069) to P.O. and G.G.. The technical support by Georg Weiss and Reinhard Jörgens (Carl Zeiss Jena, Germany) in the construction of the differential polarization attachment to the Zeiss LSM 410 is gratefully acknowledged. H.v.A. acknowledges the support of the Ultra Programme of the European Science Foundation for visiting grant 62551C SV 16. A short-term European Science Foundation Femtochemistry and Femtobiology Programme fellowship and FIRST from the University of Milan were awarded to L.F. The authors are indebted to Zsuzsanna Várkonyi for the LHCII preparation, and to László Menczel for the construction of the microscopic electro-optical cell used for the alignment of chloroplasts in an external electric field.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Plant Biology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 521, 6701, Szeged, Hungary

    Győző Garab & István Pomozi

  2. Institute of Biophysics and Institute of Genetics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 521, 6701, Szeged, Hungary

    Péter Galajda & Pál Ormos

  3. Biological Research Center, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 521, 6701, Szeged, Hungary

    Tünde Praznovszky

  4. Dipartimento di Biologia e Centro Interdipartimentale Materiali e Interfacce Nanostrutturate (CIMAINA), University of Milan, Milan, Italy

    Laura Finzi

  5. Department of Biophysics and Physics of Complex Systems, Division of Physics and Astronomy Faculty of Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1087, 1081, HV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Herbert van Amerongen

  6. Laboratory of Biophysics, Department of Agrotechnology and Food Sciences, Wageningen University, Dreijenlaan 3, 6703, HA, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Herbert van Amerongen

Authors
  1. Győző Garab
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  2. Péter Galajda
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  3. István Pomozi
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  4. Laura Finzi
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  5. Tünde Praznovszky
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  6. Pál Ormos
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  7. Herbert van Amerongen
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Correspondence to Győző Garab.

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Garab, G., Galajda, P., Pomozi, I. et al. Alignment of biological microparticles by a polarized laser beam. Eur Biophys J 34, 335–343 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00249-004-0454-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00249-004-0454-8

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