Control and Manipulation of Pathogens with an Optical Trap for Live Cell Imaging of Intercellular Interactions
Very cool! Lets hope this helps them find more cures!One of the difficulties in observing how the immune system goes about its business is that it isn't easy providing an environment where exactly one immune cell type is in proximity to one specific pathogen. This is compounded by the lack of imaging systems that provide an adequate combination of spatial and temporal resolution.
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The researchers demonstrated this by moving a pathogen called Candida albicans over to a white blood cell and watching it get engulfed. Nothing new in seeing that, but what was new was that the researchers could choose the pathogen and the white blood cell instead of just watching a big sample and waiting until something interesting happened.
They then went a bit further and stuck a bunch of immune system receptors on plastic beads (anti-CD3 receptors to be precise). These receptors are part of the signalling system that lets the body know that it is under attack. T cells form what is called a synapse with the receptor. This is exactly what the researchers saw when they moved the plastic beads into proximity with the T cells. Indeed, the T cells bound so strongly to the anti-CD3 receptors that they were able to pull the beads right out of the optical trap.
