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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2017 Dec 20.
Published in final edited form as: Methods Enzymol. 2016 Oct 31;582:1–29. doi: 10.1016/bs.mie.2016.08.002

Fig. 2.

Fig. 2

Illustration of the harmonic force spectroscopy experiment. Two trapped beads (dark gray) are bridged with an actin filament (light gray) and tightly stretched by dual-beam traps. Myosin is anchored on a platform bead and harmonically oscillated by a piezo-electric stage. The platform bead is positioned in the middle of the dumbbell, slightly below the actin filament. Lowering the dumbbell close to the platform bead will allow the motor to bind to actin and oscillate the trapped beads. Binding can take place anywhere in the oscillation cycle. This figure is not to scale.