Author: Maria Temming / Source: Science News for Students
A new set of tools can pull individual molecules out of a living cell without killing it.
Think of it like a set of tweezers for use in the world’s smallest game of “Operation.
”Normally, sampling what’s in a cell requires breaking it open. “You basically kill the cell to get access,” says Orane Guillaume-Gentil. She did not work on the new device. This microbiologist at ETH Zurich in Switzerland is, however, familiar with the idea. With older tools, she points out, “It’s not possible to look at one cell and follow it over time.” It would be dead after the first look.
Because the new technique is so gentle, it can be used on the same cell over and over. That could show how a cell responds to growth or to things in its environment. And it might help people better understand how healthy cells work, and what goes wrong inside sick cells.
The researchers used their tweezers to extract molecules from different types of cells. First the team stained its cells with dyes. These glowed when the dyes glommed onto particular targets, such as DNA. Those target molecules would now stand out when researchers viewed them under a microscope. And that helped them guide their tweezers to extract the desired substance.
The researchers have removed DNA from human bone-cancer cells. They also entered human artery cells to nab messenger RNA. It’s a type of molecule that holds the instructions for building proteins.
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