Red blood cell membrane damage by light induced thermal gradient under optical trap

Aniket Chowdhury Deepak Waghmare Raktim Dasgupta Shovan Kumar Majumder

Rapid membrane damage of optically trapped red blood cells was observed at trapping powers ≥ 280 mW. An excellent agreement between the estimated laser induced thermal gradient across trapped cell's membrane and that typically required for membrane electropermeabilization suggests a mechanism involving temperature gradient induced electropermeabilization of membrane. Also the rapid collapse of the trapped cell due to membrane rupture was seen to cause shock waves in the surroundings permeabilizing nearby untrapped cells. When the experiments were carried out with red blood cells collected from type II diabetic patients a noticeable change in the damage rate compared to normal red blood cells was seen suggesting a novel optical diagnosis method for the disease. Near infrared trap laser induced membrane damage and subsequent rapture of human red blood cells.

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