Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 14, 2026

High-Speed Magnetic Tweezers for Nanomechanical Measurements on Force-Sensitive Elements
Published on: May 12, 2023
Nanotechnology and protein mechanics
1Laboratory of Biodynamics, Graduate School of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 4259 Nagatsuta Midoriku, Yokohama, 226-8501 Japan.
Abstract:
The atomic force microscope is currently used in our and many other laboratories to measure the mechanical response of polypeptide and proteins against tensile forces applied to well defined positions in their chemical structures. The resulting force vs. extension (F-E) curves are analyzed in relation to their known conformations under various conditions. The method can be extended to study the mechanical responses of other, often much larger biological structures, and extract the component proteins and DNAs from cell membranes and chromosomes.
Related Concept Videos
Mechanical Protein Functions
Proteomics
Proteomics is the study of proteomes' function. It involves the large-scale systematic study of the proteome to denote the protein complement expressed by a genome. Scientist Mark Wilkins coined the term proteomics...
Protein Dynamics in Living Cells
Fluorescent recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) is a fluorescent-protein-based detection technique used to quantify protein movement rates within the cell. This method exposes a small portion of the cell to an intense laser beam. The laser beam causes permanent photobleaching of the fluorophore-tagged proteins in the exposed region. As the bleached...
Mechanical Protein Function
Protein Networks
These interactions can be represented through maps depicting protein-protein interaction networks, represented as nodes and edges. Nodes are circles that are representative of a protein,...
Studying the Cytoskeleton

