Main Page/BPHS 4090/Optical Tweezers of Onions

Optical Tweezers of Onion Cells

Preparation of onion epidermis for optical trapping experiments

The common onion (Allium cepa) is often used to examine individual plant cells because of the ease of isolating sheets of cells that are one cell thick. The onion bulb can be sectioned into quarters or eighths. Then, the individual scale leaves can be separated.

To view an animation on how the myosin motors move the spherosomes along the actin fibers: [[1]]