title: Constructing a magnetic tweezers to monitor RNA translocation at the single-molecule level.
abstract: Single-molecule methods have become an invaluable tool in the investigation of the mechanisms of nucleic-acid motors. Magnetic tweezers is a single-molecule manipulation technique that permits the real-time measurement of enzyme activities on single nucleic-acid molecules at high-resolution, high-throughput, and inherently constant force. Here, we describe several aspects of the implementation of magnetic tweezers, with special emphasis on the construction of a simple magnetic trap and, in particular, on the detailed description of image analysis methods to measure the extension changes in nucleic-acid molecules induced by protein activity. Finally, we carefully describe the steps involved in performing a full magnetic tweezers experiment.
authors.affiliation: Centre de Biochimie Structurale, CNRS UMR5048, 29 rue de Navacelles, 34090, Montpellier, France.
authors.forename: Desiree
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Salas
authors.forename: Veronika
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Gocheva
authors.forename: Marcelo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nöllmann
mesh_terms: D008280:Magnetics; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D052898:Optical Tweezers; D012313:RNA / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D012313:RNA