Nano-scale photoporation by tightly focused lasers: A survey

A novel cellular transfer method, nano-scale photoporation by tightly focused laser, is introduced. According to the underlying physical mechanisms, four main-stream photoporation methods are discussed-Photoporation by CW lasers, whose cutting edge technology is photoporation by violet diode laser; Photoporation with nanosecond, picosecond or amplified kHz femtosecond laser pulses, whose most commonly used laser is Nd:YAG laser; Photoporation based on MHz femtosecond pulse series from femtosecond oscillator, which plays a big role in multi-scale, interdisciplinary and in vivo research; The newly developed photoporation based on micro-jet induced by two pulses, which is regarded as the unique active photoporation method. It is predicted that photoporation, combined with the other techniques, such as two-photon microscope, lab-on-a-chip, catch-clamp, can strongly affect cell-cell communication, stem cell lineage commitment, cancer metastasis, laser gene therapy, embryology and nerve regeneration.