High-Force Magnetic Tweezers with Hysteresis-Free Force Feedback

A force calibration standard for magnetic tweezers.

To study the behavior of biological macromolecules and enzymatic reactions under force, advances in single-molecule force spectroscopy have proven instrumental. Magnetic tweezers form one of the most powerful of these techniques, due to their overall simplicity, non-invasive character, potential for high throughput measurements, and large force range. Drawbacks of magnetic tweezers, however, ar...

Touching the microworld with force-feedback optical tweezers.

Optical tweezers are a powerful tool for micromanipulation and measurement of picoNewton sized forces. However, conventional interfaces present difficulties as the user cannot feel the forces involved. We present an interface to optical tweezers, based around a low-cost commercial force feedback device. The different dynamics of the micro-world make intuitive force feedback a challenge. We prop...

Force-feedback High-speed Atomic Force Microscope

High-speed atomic force microscopy (HSAFM) has enabled researchers to view the nanometer-scale dynamic behavior of individual biological and bio-relevant molecules at a molecular-level resolution under physiologically relevant time scales, which is the realization of a dream in life sciences. These high-speed imaging applications now extend to the cellular/bacterial systems with the use of a sm...

Reconstruction of Solar Coronal Linear Force-Free Magnetic Field

High-throughput, high-force probing of DNA-protein interactions with magnetic tweezers.

Recent advances in high-throughput single-molecule magnetic tweezers have paved the way for obtaining information on individual molecules as well as ensemble-averaged behavior in a single assay. Here we describe how to design robust high-throughput magnetic tweezers assays that specifically require application of high forces (>20pN) for prolonged periods of time (>1000s). We elaborate on the st...