Optical Tweezers Animation

This animation shows the stretching and relaxing a single biological molecule using optical tweezers. The top bead is “tweezed” by a laser light and the bottom bead is fixed onto a pipette tip. A biological molecule (eg DNA) is tethered between the two beads and can be repeatedly pulled and relaxed, providing mechanical properties of the biomacromolecules at the single molecule level. This method can also provide very useful information about dynamic properties of biomolecules, which can shed light on protein folding, self-assembly, and protein-protein interactions. Animation courtesy of postdoctoral research associate Chenyang Tie, a member of Professor Joonil Seog’s Molecular Mechanics and Self-Assembly Laboratory at the University of Maryland.

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