Making an injection into a single cell represents a fundamental problem with benchtop research. That pesky lipid bilayer always gets in the way, what with its hydrophilic exterior and hydrophobic lipid interior. Warner Instruments is here to help us with their lipid coated micropipettes.
These pipettes are designed to provide micro-injection capability without the need to impale or rupture the cell membrane. SLAM [Soft lipid-assisted micro-injection -ed.] pipettes have a lipid coating on the tip which simply fuses with a cell membrane allowing the pipette contents to be non-invasively injected into the cell cytoplasm.
In addition, the micropipette lipid transfers to the plasma membrane thereby permitting modification of the lipids in the plasma membrane by an entirely novel approach.
In addition to using these for injections, they seem like they should be well-suited for neural research, where a cell is impaled by a micro-electrode and recorded from until its inevitable death due to being impaled. In the spirit of Jeff Foxworthy, if you find yourself excited by the prospect of lipid coated micro pipettes, you might be a geek.
Link to Warner Instruments
Via Laboratory Talk