Magnetic tweezers enable investigation of the molecular-scale forces in individual biological molecules, such as ligand binding to proteins. These molecules are generally around one nanometer in size, thus precise measurements of these forces remains a major research challenge because of mechanical drift on such small scales. This technology is a design for magnetic tweezers that uses a voice coil mechanism to increase their speed, accuracy, and stability. This both lowers the cost of conducting experiments on single biomolecules and makes the magnetic tweezers a viable tool for high-throughput screening.
The magnetic tweezers described by this technology use the HaloTag method to attach a molecule (protein or DNA) to the glass surface of a fluid chamber and the AviTag method to bind a magnetic streptavidin-coated bead to the free end of a protein or DNA molecule. The voice coil controls a magnet positioned above the fluid chamber with sub-micrometer resolution at speeds of ~0.7 m/s over a 1 cm range. Forces on the pico-Newton (pN) scale can be held constant over several hours without mechanical drift, allowing the tweezers to make high resolution force measurements.
This technology has been used to measure the folding kinetics of protein L at forces as low as 10-15 pN.
Patent Pending (WO/2016/126730)
Tech Ventures Reference: IR CU15168