CPM Seminar

Mechanical Force in Nanoscale Biology:
From hemostasis to DNA self-assembly

Wesley Wong

Immune Disease Institute
Harvard Medical School Affiliate

Many aspects of biological function and structure are governed by weak non-covalent bonds between and within single molecules. My research group develops and applies new methods in single-molecule manipulation to understand the dynamics of these interactions. This talk will consist of two parts. First, I will discuss how we are using optical tweezers and hydrodynamic traps to investigate von Willebrand Factor, a critical blood clotting protein. For example, we have shown that hemostatic activity is largely regulated by physicological forces acting on a single-molecule mechanical switch. In the second part of the talk, I will discuss a two new approaches that we are developing for performing high-througput single-molecule force measurements: a method capable of performing massively-parallel single-molecule force experiments using centrifugal force, and a nanoscale DNA-based switch that we are using to measure the kinetics of molecule interactions.