Fiber-based optical trapping of yeast cells as near-field magnifying lenses for parallel subwavelength imaging

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that yeast cells can be used as near-field magnifying lenses for parallel super-resolution imaging of nanoscale objects, utilizing fiber-based optical trapping to enhance imaging efficiency.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method of using live yeast cells as bio-superlenses for subwavelength imaging, expanding the potential of biological lenses in super-resolution microscopy.

Findings

Yeast cells can function as near-field magnifying lenses.

Fiber-based optical trapping effectively positions yeast cells near imaging objects.

Clear resolution of 100 nm features on Blu-ray discs achieved in parallel.

Abstract

Subwavelength imaging by microsphere lenses is a promising label-free super-resolution imaging technique. There is a growing interest to use live cells to replace the widely used non-biological microsphere lenses. In this work, we demonstrate the use of yeast cells for such imaging purpose. Using fiber-based optical trapping technique, we successfully trapped a chain of yeast cells and bring them to the vicinity of imaging objects. These yeast cells work as near-field magnifying lenses and simultaneously pick up the sub-diffraction information of the nanoscale objects under each cell and project them into the far-field. Blu-ray disc of 100 nm feature can be clearly resolved in a parallel manner by each cell, thus effectively increasing the imaging field of view and imaging efficiency. Our work will contribute to the further development of more advanced bio-superlens imaging system