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Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Investigating the thermodynamics of small biosystems with optical tweezers

Alessandro Mossa, Josep Maria Huguet and Felix Ritort

We present two examples of how single-molecule experimental techniques applied to biological systems can give insight into problems within the scope of equilibrium and nonequilibrium mesoscopic thermodynamics. The first example is the mapping of the free energy landscape of a macromolecule, the second the experimental verification of Crooks’ fluctuation theorem. In both cases the experimental setup comprises optical tweezers and DNA molecules.

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