Abstract

Control and manipulation of axonal growth is of extreme importance in the field of neurosciences as it could lead to advances such as in-vivo nerve regeneration or arbitrary patterning of neural circuits. Axonal guidance is only partially understood but it is believed that fillopodia, the fundamental pathfinders to guide the axon to its target, assimilate information form a myriad of biochemical cues. There have been significant efforts to explore artificial means for manipulating and enhancing the natural growth process. Recently, focused continuous wave (CW) near infrared IR) laser [1] has exploited the tweezing properties of light to “mechanically” drag the axonal growth cone of cell lines to achieve axon guiding. In contrast to this mechanical action, scattered infrared light modulated at 30-60 pulses per minute was shown to attract pseudopodia from a 3T3 cell line, suggesting that light itself can be used as a signaling mechanism[2]. In this line, our work shows that the fillopodia can detect and respond to the presence of focused femtosecond light at a distance, an effect that does not occur when CW illumination is used.

© 2007 IEEE