System for Laser/Mechanical Dissection of Chromosomes

越来越多的疾病正在被 与特定的染色体异常有关，例如 易位、倒位和缺失。个人选拔 染色体G带可为临床诊断做准备 用于染色体分析和鉴定的探针 异常现象。目前，所需的染色体条带被移除 通过在幻灯片上安装微针将其刮掉 液压机械手监控过程中使用 配备100倍物镜的倒置显微镜。这个 大致垂直于染色体的针状物 感兴趣的材料都将所需的材料与 染色体，并去除用于后续处理的材料。 在一个正在开发的新系统中，使用紫外线(390 Nm)激光器来 非常精确地划分要获取的材料，并烧蚀 紧邻周围的材料。然后是所需的材料 由专门开发的微针移动的微针移除 计算机控制下的机械装置。希望通过依赖于 激光修剪掉不需要的材料，会有更少的 当外来物质发生剪切作用时， 用微针将样品从残留物中分离出来 材料。此外，通过使用 物镜焦点位置和视频图像，以及 利用计算机来确定机构的运动， 对操作员的手动灵巧性要求将会很高 减少，从而使该技术得到更广泛的应用。

An increasing number of diseases are being associated with specific chromosomal abnormalities, such as translocations, invertions, and deletions. Selection of individual chromosome G- bands allows preparation of clinical diagnostic probes for chromosomal analysis and identification of these abnormalities. Presently, the desired chromosome band is removed by scraping it off a slide with a micropippette attached to a hydraulic manipulator while monitoring the process using an inverted microscope equipped with a 100X objective lens. The needle, oriented approximately perpendicularly to the chromosome of interest both demarcates the desired material from the rest of the chromosome, and removes the material for subsequent processing. In a new system under development, a UV (390nm) laser is used to very sharply demarcate the material to be acquired and ablate the immediate surrounding material. The desired material is then removed by a micropippette moved by a specially developed mechanism under computer control. It is hoped that by relying on the laser to trim away the undesired material, there will be less extraneous material than when the shearing action of the micropippette is used to separate out the sample from the remaing material. In addition, by sensing the needle tip position with the objective lens focus position and a video image, as well as employing a computer to determine the motions of a mechanism, the manual dexterity requirements on the operator will be greatly reduced, thus allowing the technique to be more widely used.