Targeted ablation using laser nanosurgery

Abstract

Laser-mediated dissection methods have been used for many years to micro-irradiate biological samples, but recent technological progress has rendered this technique more precise, powerful, and easy to use. Today pulsed lasers can be operated with diffraction limited, sub-micrometer precision to ablate intracellular structures. Here, we discuss laser nanosurgery setups and the instrumentation in our laboratory. We describe how to use this technique to ablate cytoskeletal elements in living cells. We also show how this technique can be used in multicellular organisms, to micropuncture and/or ablate cells of interest and finally how to monitor a successful laser nanosurgery.