7/01/2008 PERMALINK

MIT researchers have developed a novel technique to measure the strength of the bonds between two protein molecules important in cell machinery: Gently tugging them apart with light beams.

"It's really giving us a molecular-level picture of what's going on," said Matthew Lang, an assistant professor of biological and mechanical engineering and senior author of a paper on the work appearing in the June 30 advanced online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Last fall, Lang and others demonstrated that light beams could be used to pick up and move individual cells around the surface of a microchip.

Now they have applied the optical tweezers to measuring protein microarchitectures, allowing them to study the forces that give cells their structure and the ability to move.