Dynamics of Interaction of RBC with optical tweezers

It has recently been shown that a red blood cell (RBC) can be used as optically driven motor. The mechanism for rotation is however not fully understood. While the dependence on osmolarity of the buffer led us to conclude that the osmolarity dependent changes in shape of the cell are responsible for the observed rotation, role of ion gradients and folding of RBC to a rod shape has been invoked by Dharmadhikari et al to explain their observations. In this paper we report results of studies undertaken to understand the dynamics of a RBC when it is optically tweezed. The results obtained support our earlier conjecture that osmolarity dependent changes in shape of the cell are responsible for the observed rotation.