Holographic assembly workstation for optical manipulation

We report a holographic assembler workstation for optical trapping and micro-manipulation. The workstation is based on a titanium sapphire laser, making it particularly suited for biomaterials and incorporates a choice of user interfaces for different applications. The system is designed around a commercial inverted microscope and is configured such that it can be easily used by the non-specialist. We demonstrate the bio-capabilities of our system by manipulating a group of yeast cells, a single red blood cell and a single cell of the green algae colony Volvox