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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 7: Poster I
BP 7.34: Poster
Montag, 23. März 2009, 17:45–20:00, P3
Dual-trap optical tweezer for single molecule studies of transcription — •Marcus Jahnel1,2, Martin Behrndt1,2, and Stephan W. Grill1,2 — 1Max Planck Institut for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany — 2Max Planck Institut for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden, Germany
The ability to accurately monitor and manipulate individual macromolecules allows the study of key biological processes one molecule at the time. Here, we report the construction of a Brownian noise-limited dual-trap optical tweezer setup to investigate the dynamics of processive nucleic acid-dependent molecular motors. Splitting a 1064 nm solid-state laser beam by polarisation generates two optical traps, each independently manoeuvrable by either a piezo-driven mirror or an acousto-optical deflector. Each trap is capable of holding one end in a bead-molecular motor-nucleic acid-bead ``dumbbell-type'' experiment. Notably, a careful analysis and subsequent elimination of the cross-talk between the two polarisation states caused by the various optical elements allows the differential distance between the two traps to be determined with very high precision.
Encouraged by feasibility studies of the setup we now address the dynamics of RNA Polymerase during transcription of DNA into RNA, one of the most important cellular processes constituting the first step in transferring genetic information into functional proteins.