Biological lasers inside live cells and tissues
Speaker: Dr Matjaž Humar is head of Bio-integrated photonics and soft photonics group at Jožef Stefan Institute and assistant professor at Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He obtained his doctorate degree from Jožef Stefan Institute in 2012 and continue as a postdoc until 2013. He has been a Research fellow at Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in 2013-2016 and obtained Marie Curie fellowship in 2014-2019. Dr Humar is leading a team to develop novel photonic devices made from soft and biological materials and integrate these devices with biological systems for better understanding as well as influencing complex processes within live organisms.
Abstract: Photonic components integrated into live biological organisms have the potential to enable novel applications including ultrasensitive sensing and new imaging modalities. This perspective has motivated recent efforts in developing lasers that are made, in part or entirety, of biological or biocompatible materials. He will present their recent research on the development of these biological optical components and their applications in the study of biophysical and biochemical processes. Notably, Dr Humar’s team have for the first time demonstrated a laser completely embedded inside a live human cell. The intracellular lasers can act as very sensitive sensors, enabling them to better understand cellular processes. Each laser within a cell emits light with a slightly different fingerprint which can be used as a barcode to tag millions of cells. Further, by using a deformable droplet laser, they can measure very precisely the forces acting within a single cell. They have also realized that fat cells already contain lipid droplets which work as natural lasers. Finally, lasers and optical waveguides embedded into tissues may enable new diagnostic, treatment and imaging tools in medicine and biology.