Object-adapted optical trapping and shape-tracking of energy-switching helical bacteria

Optical tweezers are a flexible manipulation tool used to grab micro-objects at a specific point, but a controlled manipulation of objects with more complex or changing shapes is hardly possible. Here, we demonstrate, by time-sharing optical forces, that it is possible to adapt the shape of the trapping potential to the shape of an elongated helical bacterium. In contrast to most other trapped objects, this structure can continuously change its helical shape (and therefore its mechanical energy), making trapping it much more difficult than trapping tiny non-living objects. The shape deformations of the only 200-nm-thin bacterium (Spiroplasma) are measured space-resolved at 800 Hz by exploiting local phase differences in coherently scattered trapping light. By localizing each slope of the bacterium we generate high-contrast, super-resolution movies in three dimensions, without any object staining. This approach will help in investigating the nanomechanics of single wall-less bacteria while reacting to external stimuli on a broad temporal bandwidth.