User-Friendly Software for Quantitative Force Measurement

The microscopic manipulation of biological specimens, individual cells and cell components is becoming increasingly common in life science laboratories around the world. Now, the launch of the PALM MicroTweezer Force Measurement module from Carl Zeiss, which eliminates the need for additional hardware and time-consuming adjustment and calibration, means that the technique can be adopted by many more users.

The Force Measurement module not only controls the manipulation of microscopic particles with the PALM optical tweezers, but also enables the quantitative measurement of forces relevant to many life science disciplines, visualising the data in real-time. The new module offers users a flexible and user-friendly interface to the software’s functionality, which will enable a large degree of freedom in experimental design and test configuration.

The module also enables the use of the PALM MicroTweezers system for pure specimen manipulation as well as for position detection and quantitative force measurement. This means that direct comparisons may be made between experimental results and data from the literature. Calibration routines for the characterisation of the optical tweezers are performed automatically and archived together with all experimental data and images.

The Force Measurement module is supplied together with an FM StarterKit containing the FluidCell component, which permits fast and easy sample preparation. The PALM MicroTweezers and Force Measurement module can be combined with various solutions from Carl Zeiss, including the PALM MicroBeam and Colibri light source.