idw – Informationsdienst Wissenschaft
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Come and visit us at the ACHEMA 2003 in Hall F0.0 at Stand A11/B12.
The exchange of information is a characteristic trait shared by the representatives of all kingdoms of life. Higher organisms ? be they plants, animals or humans ? can only exist because the smallest building blocks of theirs, the cells, virtually never cease to communicate.
On a cellular level, the most important way of signal transduction, apart from chemical stimuli, is the mechanical contact between two cells or a cell and another surface. Depending on the side conditions, it can influence the cell cycle, initiate an immune response or cause a reorganisation of the inner cell compartments. Equally possible results are lesions of the cell membrane or even cell death.
What had turned out to be favourable if not crucial to the survival of the cells quickly became a problem for cell researchers: How should they investigate cells whose properties change already after simple mechanical contact to pipettes, microscope slides or other cells?
A group of scientists at the Berlin branch of the Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering (IBMT) has tackled precisely this question and came up with a viable solution: Their basic idea was to take the cells at their insensitivity to high frequency electromagnetic signals. Like humans that can quite sensibly touch a radio but need the incorporated technical aids to listen to the broadcasts, cells are very sensitive to mechanical stimuli but highly insensitive to electromagnetic signals in the radio frequency range.
Such radio waves are applied to the cells via miniaturised electrode systems (see figure) integrated into microchannels the size of a hair. With the help of these electromagnetic fields, the scientists succeeded to handle, hold and rotate cells without the latter even noticing, i.e. without them reacting and hence changing during the time of manipulation.
Come and visit us at the ACHEMA 2003 in Hall F0.0 at Stand A11/B12.
For more information, please contact:
Dr. Peter Geggier
Telephone: +49 (0) 30/20 93 - 88 09
Fax: +49 (0) 30/20 93 - 86 35
Email: peter.geggier@ibmt.fraunhofer.de
http://www.ibmt.fhg.de/index_e.html
http://www.ibmt.fhg.de/ibmt7messen_e.html
Criteria of this press release:
Biology, Economics / business administration, Information technology, Medicine, Nutrition / healthcare / nursing
transregional, national
Miscellaneous scientific news/publications, Research projects
German
You can combine search terms with and, or and/or not, e.g. Philo not logy.
You can use brackets to separate combinations from each other, e.g. (Philo not logy) or (Psycho and logy).
Coherent groups of words will be located as complete phrases if you put them into quotation marks, e.g. “Federal Republic of Germany”.
You can also use the advanced search without entering search terms. It will then follow the criteria you have selected (e.g. country or subject area).
If you have not selected any criteria in a given category, the entire category will be searched (e.g. all subject areas or all countries).
