Recent Advances in Optical Tweezers Jeffrey R. Moffitt, 1 Yann R. Chemla, 3 Steven B. Smith, 1 and Carlos Bustamante 1,2 1 Department of Physics, 2 Departments of Chemistry, and Molecular and Cell Biology and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, Berkeley , California 94720; email: [email protected] .edu 3 Department of Physics, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801 Annu. Rev. Biochem. 2008. 77:205–28 First published online as a Review in Advance on February 28, 2008 The Annual Review of Biochemistry is online at biochem.annualreviews.org This article’s doi: 10.1146/annurev.biochem.77.043007.090225 Copyright c 2008 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved 0066-4154/08/0707-0205$20.00 Key Words force, hybrid-instruments, molecular motors, single molecule, torque Abstract Ithas bee n over20 year s si nc e the pi oneeri ng work of Ar thur As hkin, and in the intervening years, the field of optical tweezers has grown tremendously. Optical tweezers are now being used in the inves- tigation of an increasing number of biochemical and biophysical processes, from the basic mechanical properties of biological poly- mers to the multitude of molecular machines that drive the internal dynamics of the cell. Innovation, however, continues in all areas of instrumentation and technique, with much of this work focusing on the refinement of established methods and on the integration of this tool with other forms of single-molecule manipulation or detection. Although technical in nature, these developments have important impli cation s for the expan ded use of optical tweeze rs in bioch emi- cal research and thus should be of general interest. In this review, we address these recent advances and speculate on possible future developments. 205 Click here for quick links to Annual Reviews content online, including: • Other articles in this volume • Top cited articles • Top downloaded articles • Our comprehensive search Further ANNUAL REVIEWS A n n u . R e v . B i o c h e m . 2 0 0 8 . 7 7 : 2 0 5 2 2 8 . D o w n l o a d e d f r o m w w w . a n n u a l r e v i e w s . o r g b y U n i v e r s i d a d d e C h i l e o n 0 3 / 2 1 / 1 1 . F o r p e r s o n a l u s e o n l y .