Biomolecular tweezers, devices too tiny to view without the help of a microscope, are helping researchers examine how cells and proteins interact with magnetic force.

Detailed last month in the journal Technology, the devices came from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University in Atlanta.

"Our lab has been very interested in mechanical-chemical switches in the extracellular matrix, but we currently have a difficult time interrogating these mechanisms and discovering how they work in vivo," Thomas Barker, an associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, said in a Georgia Institute of Technology press release.

"This device could help biologists and biomedical engineers answer questions that cannot be answered right now."

Using opposing magnetic and electrophoretic forces, the biomolecular tweezers can stretch cells and molecules to allow researchers to study them more closely and examine receptor activity and other biochemical activity.

Researchers can combine multiples of the devices, which were developed through nanolithography, to look at several molecules and cells at the same time. They can also use the biomolecular tweezers to see how cells bind to receptors under different conditions.

"Having a device like this will allow us to interrogate what the specific binding sites are and what the specific binding triggers are," Barker explained in the press release. "Right now, we know very little about this area when it comes to protein biochemistry."

The researchers are currently working with prototype 15 by 15 arrays of the tweezers.

"For me, it's not sufficient to pull and hold onto a single protein," said Barker. "I have to pull and hold onto tens of thousands of proteins to really use the technologies we have to develop molecular probes."

The devices can be used to examine everything from protein molecules to cells, which have a size difference of around a thousand times, said Wilbur Lam, an assistant professor in the Coulter Department. He started developing the tweezers with Barker about three years ago, said the press release.

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