Physics

Cell

Organelle

Nanotechnology

Snapshot (computer storage)

Biology

Operating system

Biophysics

Physical chemistry

Chemistry

Ecology

Materials science

Optical tweezers

Nucleic acid

Trapping

Single-cell analysis

Tweezers

Computer science

Quantum mechanics

Computational biology

Cell biology

Genetics

Multicellular organism

Nature Nanotechnology

Much of the functionality of multicellular systems arises from the spatial organization and dynamic behaviours within and between cells. Current single-cell genomic methods only provide a transcriptional ‘snapshot’ of individual cells. The real-time analysis and perturbation of living cells would generate a step change in single-cell analysis. Here we describe minimally invasive nanotweezers that can be spatially controlled to extract samples from living cells with single-molecule precision. They consist of two closely spaced electrodes with gaps as small as 10–20 nm, which can be used for the dielectrophoretic trapping of DNA and proteins. Aside from trapping single molecules, we also extract nucleic acids for gene expression analysis from living cells without affecting their viability. Finally, we report on the trapping and extraction of a single mitochondrion. This work bridges the gap between single-molecule/organelle manipulation and cell biology and can ultimately enable a better understanding of living cells. A nanotweezer system based on dielectrophoresis can trap, manipulate and extract biomolecules and organelles in living cells at physiological conditions with high spatiotemporal resolution and minimal invasiveness.

Nanoscale tweezers for single-cell biopsies