Recent advances in magnetic tweezers

Abstract

Since their first demonstration of manipulation and mechanical coiling of a single DNA molecule, magnetic tweezers have become a popular and widely used single-molecule manipulation technique. Magnetic tweezers have yielded a wealth of information on the elastic properties of (coiled) DNA and have provided critical insights into the dynamic activity of DNA-processing enzymes. Recent years have seen a wave of technological creativity, and a flurry of new methods and technological advances have been introduced to magnetic tweezers, which will enable more and previously inaccessible information to be extracted from biophysical systems. In this review, we survey the most important recent advances and reflect on more interesting twists to come.