(June 28, 2012) A team of bioengineers and biochemists from Penn State
University has demonstrated a device about the size of a dime that is capable
of manipulating objects, including living materials such as blood cells and
entire small organisms, using sound waves. Their research is published online
this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The device, called acoustic tweezers, is the first
technology capable of touchlessly trapping and manipulating Caenorhabditis
elegans (C. elegans), a one millimeter long roundworm that is an important
model system for studying diseases and development in humans. Acoustic tweezers
are also capable of precisely manipulating cellular-scale objects that are
essential to many areas of fundamental biomedical research.