Related Experiment Video
Updated: Apr 26, 2026

DNA Nanotubes as a Versatile Tool to Study Semiflexible Polymers
Published on: October 25, 2017
Easyworm: an open-source software tool to determine the mechanical properties of worm-like chains
Guillaume Lamour1, Julius B Kirkegaard2, Hongbin Li3
1Centre for High-Throughput Biology, University of British Colombia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada ; Department of Chemistry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1, Canada ; Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, University of British Colombia, Vancouver, BC V6T 2A1, Canada.
Background:
A growing spectrum of applications for natural and synthetic polymers, whether in industry or for biomedical research, demands for fast and universally applicable tools to determine the mechanical properties of very diverse polymers. To date, determining these properties is the privilege of a limited circle of biophysicists and engineers with appropriate technical skills.
Findings:
Easyworm is a user-friendly software suite coded in MATLAB that simplifies the image analysis of individual polymeric chains and the extraction of the mechanical properties of these chains. Easyworm contains a comprehensive set of tools that, amongst others, allow the persistence length of single chains and the Young's modulus of elasticity to be calculated in multiple ways from images of polymers obtained by a variety of techniques (e.g. atomic force microscopy, electron, contrast-phase, or epifluorescence microscopy).
Conclusions:
Easyworm thus provides a simple and efficient tool for specialists and non-specialists alike to solve a common problem in (bio)polymer science. Stand-alone executables and shell scripts are provided along with source code for further development.
Related Concept Videos
Polymer Classification: Architecture
Mechanical Protein Functions
Radical Chain-Growth Polymerization: Chain Branching
Anionic Chain-Growth Polymerization: Mechanism
Polymers: Defining Molecular Weight
The number average molecular weight (Mn) is the summation of the number...
Radical Chain-Growth Polymerization: Mechanism

