Figure 2.

Unzipping a Y structure under different trunk forces. (a) Force along arms versus number of base pairs unzipped under no trunk force (black) and 10 pN trunk force (red). Since the measured forces along the two arms were nearly identical, their mean force was used to make these plots. Theoretical predictions are shown for comparison. Data were taken at 10 kHz and filtered to 20 Hz. (b) Mean force along arms versus force along trunk (black). For each trunk force, force along arms was averaged over the first 1500 bp unzipped. Theoretical prediction is shown in red.