Entrapping a polymer chain in a light well under a good solvent condition

Abstract

During the last decade, the laser trapping technique has been actively applied to elucidate the property of macromolecules, DNA, RNA, cytoskeleton fibres, etc. Due to the inherent difficulty in the direct trapping of single molecules at approximately 300 K, most of the current studies on laser trapping utilize the experimental technique to grasp microbeads that are attached to a single macromolecule, instead of using direct trapping. A few studies have demonstrated the applicability of laser trapping for highly packed compact DNA under a `poor' solvent condition without any beads. The present study achieves laser trapping on a single DNA molecule under a `good' solvent condition without any microbeads. The time-dependent change of the conformation accompanied by ON/OFF laser irradiation was measured and analysed in terms of the entrapment and release of a coiled polymer around a micrometer-sized potential.