SENSOCELL Optical Tweezers
With its innovative optical manipulation module and unique force spectroscopy technology, the SENSOCELL optical trapping platform is the perfect tool for researchers pushing the limits of science in the field of Cellular and Molecular Biophysics.
The only optical tweezers including calibration-free force measurements
SENSOCELL is the only optical trapping platform in the market that allows measuring forces without needing any prior calibration of the trap stiffness enabling even non-expert users to perform direct force measurements and rheology assays in an easy and speedy manner.
Measure inside living cells, tissues and organisms
Our patented and exclusive force spectroscopy technology allows measuring forces in complex media like living cells, tissues or living organisms as well as non biological material such as colloids or liquid crystals.
Active rheology assays of cellular medium, colloids and protein condensates
Characterize the sitffness, viscosity and elasticity of cells cytoplasm and nucleus with our automatized TimSom rheology routine.
Optical trapping and force measurements on cells and organelles
Forces can be measured on irregular objects such as cells and bacteria or endogenous trappable cellular structures like lipid vesicles, membranes and nuclei.
SENSOCELL Main Features & Applications Slideshow
Cell nucleus indentation with 2 traps. Courtesy of M. Krieg’s lab (ICFO)
Applications of the SENSOCELL optical trapping platform
Our optical trapping setup has applications in different fields:
Cell Mechanobiology
Applications include measuring cell membrane tension, receptor-ligand adhesions, intracellular rheology, cell indentation, nucleus mechanics, cell motion forces and cell-cell interactions
Liquid-Liquid Phase separation (LLPS) of biomolecular condensates
Characterize the viscoelasticity of protein droplets by measuring their bulk and interface complex shear modulus
Single molecule interactions
Study DNA-protein interactions, motor protein activity and the mechanics of cytoskelton filaments
Colloidal and soft matter physics
Measure particle-particle interactions in colloidal systems, gels, or liquid crystals and perform active rheology assays of these materials
Precise, extensive and flexible optical trapping capabilities
Sensocell users can manually control mutliple optical traps using the “click & drag” mode through the camera interface or apply predefined oscillations, trajectories, pattern sequences, active rheology routines or force clamping in an automatized way.
Generate and control up to 256 optical traps
Thanks to its fast acousto-optic deflection (AOD) technology, our optical trapping module allows generating and manipulating up to 256 simultaneous optical traps.
Fluorescence, Confocal and Super-Resolution imaging
SENSOCELL is an add-on instrument for inverted microscopes with customizable configuration. The SENSOCELL optical trapping platform can be offered combined with several imaging techniques including Spinning Disk Confocal, SIM, epi-FL or TIRF.
An optical trapping setup with customizable configuration
The SENSOCELL optical tweezers platform includes:
- Our AOD based optical manipulation module
- The direct force spectroscopy module
- An ultra-stable single-frequency laser source (5W, 1064 nm)
- A High NA optical trapping objective
- An imaging camera to be selected from the HAMAMATSU ORCA family
- Our LightAce control software suite
The system can be acquired already assembled on a customizable inverted microscope from the NIKON Ti2 family. The system can eventually be installed on preexisting NIKON Ti2 inverted microscopes after a compatibility check.
Video of a sequence of multiple trap patterns applied on 16 microspheres
Different optical manipulation modes used on beads and cells
Discover LightAce, our control software suite for SENSOCELL optical trapping platform.
LightAce is a powerful, flexible and user-friendly control software suite for the SENSOCELL optical tweezers. Easy and intuitive to work with, LightAce will allow you to:
Program advanced optical trapping experiments with our built-in routines
Navigating through the different options on the interface menu, LightAce offers you an incredible set of optical trapping, manipulation & measurement features. Use our LightAce integrated routines and customize them for your specific experiments by simply setting the desired parameter values.
Record videos synchronized with force and position data
Synchronized with the optical trapping platform camera, LightAce allows recording videos of your experiments synchronized in time with mutliple traps force and position data.
Create your own routines using our LightAce SDK.
Use the LightAce Software Development Kit (SDK) to create your own routines without coding in a simple, flexible and visual interface.
1. Choose among the manipulation & measurements functions included in the LightAce SDK library:
2. Customize your selected functions by setting their input parameters values following our detailed SDK manual instructions:
3. Combine them to create your routines and control all optical trapping capabilities and features of SENSOCELL. Here is an example of a1-click routine that applies a predefined trajectory simultaneously to multiple traps:
Would you like a DEMO?
Download SENSOCELL brochure