Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 354, Issue 6310, Pages 305-307Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.aah5974
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Funding
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [LI 1743/2-1, TI 329/6-1, GrK1952/1]
- Nanosystems Initiative Munich [SFB 1032, SFB 960]
- Braunschweig International Graduate School of Metrology
- European Commission [317110, 336440]
- Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation
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Forces in biological systems are typically investigated at the single-molecule level with atomic force microscopy or optical and magnetic tweezers, but these techniques suffer from limited data throughput and their requirement for a physical connection to the macroscopic world. We introduce a self-assembled nanoscopic force clamp built from DNA that operates autonomously and allows massive parallelization. Single-stranded DNA sections of an origami structure acted as entropic springs and exerted controlled tension in the low piconewton range on a molecular system, whose conformational transitions were monitored by single-molecule Frster resonance energy transfer. We used the conformer switching of a Holliday junction as a benchmark and studied the TATA-binding protein-induced bending of a DNA duplex under tension. The observed suppression of bending above 10 piconewtons provides further evidence of mechanosensitivity in gene regulation.
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