BACKGROUND Bacteria are frequently cultured from sputum samples of severe asthma patients suggesting a defect in bacterial clearance from the airway. We measured the capacity of macrophages from patients with asthma to phagocytose bacteria. METHODS Phagocytosis of fluorescently-labelled polystyrene beads, Haemophilus influenzae or Staphylococcus aureus by broncholaveolar lavage alveolar macro...

Soluble mediators such as tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) may be important in the pathogenesis of many chronic pulmonary infections. We examined the ability of Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis, Pasteurella haemolytica, and ovine lentiviruses (OvLV) to induce TNF-alpha secretion by pulmonary alveolar macrophages (PAM). Bronchoalveolar lavage cells, composed of greater than 90% PAM, wer...

A laser diffraction-induced dielectrophoresis (DEP) phenomenon for the patterning and manipulation of individual HepG2 cells and polystyrene beads via positive/negative DEP forces is reported in this paper. The optoelectronic substrate was fabricated using an organic photoconductive material, TiOPc, via a spin-coating process on an indium tin oxide glass surface. A piece of square aperture arra...

Separation of cells is a critical process for studying cell properties, disease diagnostics, and therapeutics. Cell sorting by acoustic waves offers a means to separate cells on the basis of their size and physical properties in a label-free, contactless, and biocompatible manner. The separation sensitivity and efficiency of currently available acoustic-based approaches, however, are limited, t...

Coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) microscopy with high sensitivity, and high three dimensional resolution, has been developed for vibrational imaging of chemical species [1]. Due to the coherent nature of the CARS emission, it has been reported that the Epi-CARS (E-CARS) and Forward-CARS (F-CARS) signals detection depends on the size and shape of the sample [2,3]. In this paper, we i...

The use of silicon photonic devices for optical manipulation has recently enabled the direct handling of objects like nucleic acids and nanoparticles that are much smaller than could previously be trapped using traditional laser tweezers. The ability to manipulate even smaller matter however requires the development of photonic structures with even stronger trapping potentials. In this work we ...

We have used the cryosection immunogold technique to study the composition of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis phagosome. We have used quantitative immunogold staining to determine the distribution of several known markers of the endosomal-lysosomal pathway in human monocytes after ingestion of either M. tuberculosis, Legionella pneumophila, or polystyrene beads. Compared with the other phagocyti...

The flux of organic particles below the mixed layer is one major pathway of carbon from the surface into the deep ocean. The magnitude of this export flux depends on two major processes-remineralization rates and sinking velocities. Here, we present an efficient method to measure sinking velocities of particles in the size range from approximately 3-400 μm by means of video microscopy (FlowCAM®...

Anticardiolipin antibodies (aCL) derived from the sera of individuals exhibiting the antiphospholipid syndrome (APS) directly bind to beta 2-glycoprotein I (beta 2-GPI), which is adsorbed to an oxidized polystyrene surface. Oxygen atoms were introduced on a polystyrene surface by irradiation with electron or gamma-ray radiation. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy revealed the irradiated surfaces ...

Varun Saxena Using a fixed beam with a fundamental Gaussian mode, a gradient force optical trap was used to translate a single cell using a carboxylated polystyrene bead as a handle. Currently, the force with which the optical trap can manipulate an individual cell alone is very weak. In fact, the inadequate nature of the optical trap on living cells has prevented this technique from being usef...