2005

Measuring fungal growth forces with optical tweezers

Optical tweezers are proving themselves useful and powerful tools in many areas of biological research, including fungal cell biology. Here we investigate their potential as a novel method for measuring the growth forces of fungal hyphae. We have calibrated the trapping forces produced by our tweezers system, and using beads have investigated whether growing hyphae can overcome this force and push beads out of the trap. Although 4 μm beads were pushed out of the trap by fungal hyphae, using 1 μm beads produced some more intriguing results. The problems encountered with this method of measurement and possible solutions are discussed.

2005 pubs