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Life sciences that focus on improving the quality and standard of life have attracted worldwide attention in fundamental sciences and have promoted the development of novel tools to reveal the mechanism behind biological activities. Advances in single-cell level methods have further deepened the cell biology study, and helped unravel the different structures and function of living cells on a microscopic and molecular level. Among these methods is the Optical Tweezers (OT), a significant achievement of laser physics, which has been widely applied to understand cell interaction dynamics with the ability to non-invasively trap, manipulate and displace a living cell or part of it with highly accurate positioning of the cells. The reversible aggregation of red blood cells (RBC) that strongly influences the hemodynamic mechanisms and blood microcirculation may serve not only as an indicator of disease, but also as a factor affecting the pathological process. In this study, a two-channel OT system combined with a chopper-modulated laser irradiating system was applied to investigate the RBC aggregation mechanism and to reveal the influence of the low-level pulsed He-Ne laser short-time irradiation on this process. A proportional relationship between the interaction area of RBC and the aggregation force was obtained, verified the applicability of the depletion layer model to the RBC aggregation process in plasma. More importantly, a regulating effect of low-level He-Ne laser irradiation on this process was discovered. A statistically significant decrease (p < 0.05) in RBC aggregation forces was observed following 120 s laser light with 225 Hz pulse frequency. This observation brings new insights into conception of the regulating effects occurring during the laser light interaction with blood.
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