Cell Manipulation Question

[othergordon11]

Hi, I am a recent physics graduate and have become very interested in the world of cell biology, mostly the manipulation of cells. I have very little knowledge of biological techniques but I was wondering if anyone could tell me:

What are the best methods for manipulating single cells or small groups of cells? Pipettes/capillaries/needles? I am not thinking of complex methods like optical tweezers, but of simple mechanical/manual methods and what tools might be commonly used.

Thanks.

[Vagabond]

there are a lot of ways to minipulate cells perhaps you could narrow your quiestion down a little. Like do you want to enrich a population, transfect a population, purify cells or such. Drug selection can elimintate unwanted cells, Flow cytemetry and isolate and count specific cells. As for single cells one could use patch-clamp methods (though this is usually used for measureing ion channels)

[othergordon11]

I guess I am curious if there is ever any physical hands on cell manipulation, like poking, cutting, or moving individual cells or small groups under a microscope. Are there tiny tools for these type of actions?

From what I have dug up on patch clamping it seems that they are just pipettes drawn to small tips ~(1 micrometer) and they stick this tiny end into the cells and force reactions from them? Is this right?

I apologize for being a bit of a layman, when it comes to this stuff. Thanks alot though

[daniel.kurz]

Absolutely. There are micro instruments. Things like glass needles so small that you have to be under and microscope. They are immensely sharp and go through the membrane of the cell like nothing. They also go through hands like nothing. I had an accident with one once.

[Vagabond]

yes basically that is correct. As far as my experience goes I have used flow cytometry (cell sorting) to isolate specific cells from an individual animal I have also used a company called Mylteni biotech to isolate and purify specific T-cells. As far as cell culture goes one can harvest specific cells using drugs and other types of selections. There are techniques of microdissecting cells from tissue sections which one can use a verity of methods to analyze.