Scientists in Australia have used internet links to successfully perform
microsurgery on cells located thousands of miles away in a southern California
laboratory.
The surgeons used a newly developed internet-based laser scissor-and-tweezers
technology called RoboLase, demonstrating the potential of using the technology
for real-time research activities between laboratories and to perform medical
procedures from distant locations.
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In a proof-of-concept series of experiments, the scientists from
UC Irvine,
UC San Diego and the
University of Queensland
employed RoboLase to produce surgical holes in a distinct pattern less than one
micron in diameter (1/1000th of a millimetre) in single cells.
Using a control panel projected onto a computer screen, researchers in
Queensland were able to remotely perform the cell surgery on a laser microscope
system in the southern California laboratory.
"The speed and precision of the sub-cellular surgery was the same as if we
were doing it in our labs here in California," said Michael Berns, professor of
biomedical engineering at UCI, and adjunct professor of bioengineering at UC San
Diego, who led the development of the RoboLase technology.
The scientists were also able to grab, or "optically trap", swimming sperm in
the California lab by operating optical-laser tweezers remotely from Australia.
This was heralded as "a particularly noteworthy accomplishment" because it
demonstrated the amount of computer bandwidth (one gigabyte per second) needed
by the research groups to observe and grab a fast-moving sperm with virtually no
detectible delay in image transmission between the laboratories.
"If there was a detectible delay in either the transmission or reception of
the video images our colleagues in Australia would not have been able to
identify and trap a targeted sperm under the laser microscope in the California
laboratory," explained Linda Shi of UCSD, one of the key developers of the
unique computer software used in the sperm-trapping experiments.
According to Berns, who is the founding director of the
Beckman Laser Institute
at UCI, the general significance of this work is that researchers can now
collaborate on experiments with scientists around the world without having to
travel to a laboratory site.
He added that the experiments serve to demonstrate that the internet will
become increasingly more useful and important for the actual conduct of
scientific research and possibly for the delivery of selective medical
procedures.
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