Figure 5.

End-to-end length and contour length of the 5 nt single-stranded linker is consistently longer for unzipping than for shearing, showing the consistently higher tension throughout the structure during unzipping until the configuration is fully unbound and even for some small distance after. The consistent contour length decrease during unzipping indicates the recovery of base stacking, which may further decrease the energy cost of unzipping (the main duplex length is 40 bp; other lengths result in similar data).