It has been over 20 years since the pioneering work of Arthur Ashkin, and in the intervening
years, the field of optical tweezers has grown tremendously. Optical tweezers are now being …

Many biologically important macromolecules undergo motions that are essential to their
function. Biophysical techniques can now resolve the motions of single molecules down to …

At the heart of bacterial cell division is a dynamic ring-like structure of polymers of the tubulin
homologue FtsZ. This ring forms a scaffold for assembly of at least ten additional proteins at …

Chromosomes are organized as chromatin loops that promote segregation, enhancer-
promoter interactions, and other genomic functions. Loops were hypothesized to form by …

A large family of multimeric ATPases are involved in such diverse tasks as cell division,
chromosome segregation, DNA recombination, strand separation, conjugation, and viral …

Molecular motors are diverse enzymes that transduce chemical energy into mechanical
work and, in doing so, perform critical cellular functions such as DNA replication and …

Bacterial cells require DNA segregation machinery to properly distribute a genome to both
daughter cells upon division. The most common system involved in chromosome and …

Several classes of biological molecules that transform chemical energy into mechanical
work are known as motor proteins or molecular motors. These nanometer-sized machines …

FtsK is a DNA translocase that coordinates chromosome segregation and cell division in
bacteria. In addition to its role as activator of XerCD site-specific recombination, FtsK can …

Bacterial chromosomes are organized in replichores of opposite sequence polarity. This
conserved feature suggests a role in chromosome dynamics. Indeed, sequence polarity …