Optical Trapping in Plant Cells

Optical tweezers allow noninvasive manipulation of subcellular compartments to study their physical interactions and attachments. By measuring (delay of) displacements, (semi-)quantitative force measurements within a living cell can be performed. In this chapter, we provide practical tips for setting up such experiments paying special attention to the technical considerations for integrating optical tweezers into a confocal microscope. Next, we describe some working protocols to trap intracellular structures in plant cells.