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Scientists Arm Cells With Tiny Lasers
sciencehabit writes: Scientists have implanted tiny lasers within living cells. A team of physicists and biologists have coaxed a cell to envelop a tiny plastic sphere that acts like a resonant cavity—thus placing a whole laser within a cell (abstract). The spheres are seasoned with a fluorescent dye, so that a zap with one color of light makes them radiate at another color. The light then resonates in the sphere, triggering laser action and amplifying itself. So although demonstrated only in cultured cells, the technique might someday be used to track the movement of individual cells, say, within cancerous tumors.
Come on people! All I wanted were some cells with frickin' lasers on them!
Proverbs 21:19
Heck, at this point I'd settle for some GMO-mutated sea bass ...
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
amendment
...welcome our unicellular laser-toting overlords.
Not sure how to welcome them, though.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
I assume this research works with shark cells as well?
Okay, I've been willing to put up with ads on Slashdot for many years. I've never taken advantage of the 'turn off ads' feature for subscribers. But the auto-playing Youtube ads that I'm getting today are crashing browser tabs, they're occasionally scrolling my browser up to the top of the page and interrupting my reading [and my writing--typing this comment was interrupted by shittyness from the video ad], and they're causing pages to have to continue to load occasionally after they've already loaded. I'm glad I have my sound muted by default.
Fuck you, Slashdot, I'm browsing you with adblock from now on.
Not to shoot out of them. To produce images in them.
At least one piece of science fiction I've read has eyeball lasing cells in it. Now it seems less fictional.
Do not look into microscope with remaining good eye.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
...if we added this to the cells of an unborn child, when it grows up we would have someone awesome to take to a rave as a lightshow...
These are the important questions.
The new part of this research is forcing cells to produce a resonance chamber to produce the laser from light. I'm not sure how useful this is -- GFP (Green Fluorescent Protein) tagging has been used to track the movements (and reproduction) of cells for decades.
I SO picked the wrong career. I sit at a keyboard all day writing loop after loop to process lists in accordance with an endless litany of business rules....when I could have been implanting microscopic lasers into single-celled organisms!!!
Damn. I wonder if I am too old to go back to school.
Talk about "Killer T-Cells"!!
One step closer to Laser Sharks!
Where are our promised "sharks with frikken' lasers"?
The people demand answers!
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Does anyone have a cell sized font they can use