This could help scientists explore so-far unanswered questions about biological functions within individual cells, including questions relating to cells of the same type – such as brain, muscle and fat cells – with very different compositions at the molecular level. So far, research has been limited by the lack of a technique for exploring cells without bursting them and subsequently mixing their contents, making it extremely difficult to extract information about the structure and activity within the cell.

The new process developed at Imperial College and described in a Nature Nanotechnology paper could allow researchers to extract individual molecules from cells without destroying them.

The tweezers are built from a very sharp glass rod, which ends with a pair of electrodes made from a graphite-like material; these electrodes are split by a gap of just 10-20nm. Applying an AC voltage creates a very powerful and localised electrical field capable of trapping the contents of cells. The tool is so precise that individual DNA strand and transcription factors (which influence the activity of genes) can be extracted from cells.

“With our tweezers, we can extract the minimum number of molecules that we need from a cell in real time, without damaging it,” said Professor Joshua Edel, the Imperial chemist who co-led the team behind the innovation. “We have demonstrated that we can manipulate and extract several different parts from different regions of the cell, including mitochondria from the cell body, RNA from different locations in the cytoplasm and even DNA from the nucleus.”

The tool could be used to carry out some experiments that have previously not been logistically possible, such as by adding and removing mitochondria from individual nerve cells to study their role in the functioning of the nervous system, including in neurodegenerative disease.

“These nano-scale tweezers could be a vital addition to the toolbox for manipulating single cells and their parts,” said Dr Alex Ivanov, who led the research with Edel.

“By studying living cells at the molecular level, we can extract individual molecules from the same location with unprecedented spatial resolution and over multiple points in time. This may provide a deeper understanding of cellular processes, and in establishing why cells from the same type can be very different to each other.”

This could help scientists explore so-far unanswered questions about biological functions within individual cells, including questions relating to cells of the same type – such as brain, muscle and fat cells – with very different compositions at the molecular level. So far, research has been limited by the lack of a technique for exploring cells without bursting them and subsequently mixing their contents, making it extremely difficult to extract information about the structure and activity within the cell.

The new process developed at Imperial College and described in a Nature Nanotechnology paper could allow researchers to extract individual molecules from cells without destroying them.

The tweezers are built from a very sharp glass rod, which ends with a pair of electrodes made from a graphite-like material; these electrodes are split by a gap of just 10-20nm. Applying an AC voltage creates a very powerful and localised electrical field capable of trapping the contents of cells. The tool is so precise that individual DNA strand and transcription factors (which influence the activity of genes) can be extracted from cells.

“With our tweezers, we can extract the minimum number of molecules that we need from a cell in real time, without damaging it,” said Professor Joshua Edel, the Imperial chemist who co-led the team behind the innovation. “We have demonstrated that we can manipulate and extract several different parts from different regions of the cell, including mitochondria from the cell body, RNA from different locations in the cytoplasm and even DNA from the nucleus.”

The tool could be used to carry out some experiments that have previously not been logistically possible, such as by adding and removing mitochondria from individual nerve cells to study their role in the functioning of the nervous system, including in neurodegenerative disease.

“These nano-scale tweezers could be a vital addition to the toolbox for manipulating single cells and their parts,” said Dr Alex Ivanov, who led the research with Edel.

“By studying living cells at the molecular level, we can extract individual molecules from the same location with unprecedented spatial resolution and over multiple points in time. This may provide a deeper understanding of cellular processes, and in establishing why cells from the same type can be very different to each other.”