Accurate measurement of force and displacement with optical tweezers using DNA molecules as metrology standards

Optical tweezers facilitate measurement of piconewton-level forces and nanometer-level displacements and have broad applications in biophysics and soft matter physics research. We have shown previously that DNA molecules can be used as metrology standards to define such measurements. Force-extension measurements on two DNA molecules of different lengths can be used to determine four necessary measurement parameters. Here, we show that the accuracy of determining these parameters can be improved by more than 7-fold by incorporating measurements of the DNA overstretching transition and using a multi-step data analysis procedure. This method results in very robust and precise fitting of DNA force-extension measurements to the worm-like chain model. We verify the accuracy through independent measurements of DNA stretching, DNA unzipping, and microsphere contact forces.