Light-driven microrobotics and their applications for single-cell manipulation

Micro-robotics is exploding in popularity, driven by the need to control the position of individual cells and other micronsized particles. There are many examples of optical tweezer-based micro-robots; here we introduce the first microrobotic system that relies on the related technology of optoelectronic tweezers (OET). The optoelectronic micro-robots described here are straightforward to manufacture and can be programmed to carry out sophisticated, multi-axis operations. One particularly useful program is a serial combination of "load,""transport,"and "deliver,"which can be applied to manipulate a wide range of micron-dimension payloads. Importantly, micro-robots programmed in this manner are much gentler on fragile mammalian cells than conventional OET techniques. The micro-robotic system described here was demonstrated to be useful for single-cell isolation, clonal expansion and RNA sequencing, applications that are becoming increasingly important in the post-CRISPR life-science research landscape. We propose that the OET micro-robotic system, which can be implemented using a microscope and consumer-grade optical projector, will be useful for a wide range of applications in the life sciences and beyond.