RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Hemodynamic forces can be accurately measured in vivo with optical tweezers JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 150367 DO 10.1101/150367 A1 Sébastien Harlepp A1 Fabrice Thalmann A1 Gautier Follain A1 Jacky G. Goetz YR 2017 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/15/150367.abstract AB Force sensing and generation at the tissular and cellular scale is central to many biological events. There is a growing interest in modern cell biology for methods enabling force measurements in vivo. Optical trapping allows non-invasive probing of pico-Newton forces and thus emerged as a promising mean for assessing biomechanics in vivo. Nevertheless, the main obstacles rely in the accurate determination of the trap stiffness in heterogeneous living organisms, at any position where the trap is used. A proper calibration of the trap stiffness is thus required for performing accurate and reliable force measurements in vivo. Here, we introduce a method that overcomes these difficulties by accurately measuring hemodynamic profiles in order to calibrate the trap stiffness. Doing so, and using numerical methods to assess the accuracy of the experimental data, we measured flow profiles and drag forces imposed to trapped red blood cells of living zebrafish embryos. Using treatments enabling blood flow tuning, we demonstrated that such method is powerful in measuring hemodynamic forces in vivo with high accuracy and confidence. Altogether, this study demonstrates the power of optical tweezing in measuring low range hemodynamic forces in vivo and offers an unprecedented tool in both cell and developmental biology.