Figure 1.

Noise suppression for optical-tweezer experiments. A) Scheme of two 1 µm beads held in laser traps tethered by a 500 nm linker (drawn to scale). B) Magnification of the “reaction chamber”. Top: a conventional linker system comprising two dsDNA molecules attached to the molecule of interest (green circle). Bottom: a stiff linker system comprising multiple dsDNA molecules aligned in parallel. C) Monte-Carlo simulations were used to estimate the load-dependent fluctuation dynamics of two beads held in laser traps. One example of simulated force-extension trace for each linker system is shown and the averaged response from 200 simulated traces overlaid in a darker shade. Inset: simulated force-dependent noise amplitude as measured by the standard deviation of the extension for floppy versus stiff linkers.