Experimental Soft Condensed Matter Group
Harvard University, Prof. D. A. Weitz

Cool Picture of the Moment
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We study the rheological and mechanical properties of LOTS of different systems. Here, we are investigating the properties of DNA Plasmids. All the pictures were provided by Bivash Dasgupta.

We study the rheology of circular polymers using microrheological techniques that have been developed in our lab. DNA was used as a model cyclic polymer since they are very monodisperse and if treated well are free of single chain impurities (broken cycles).

This is a picture of a 16kbp (kilobase-pair) DNA ; the conformational change in the DNA with the addition of Topoisomerase enzyme which removes the supertwisting.

This picture depicts DNA w/o any enzyme treatment and hence one can see the super twisting in the DNA.

Bivash rounded up his friends to do some of the experiments...

The samples were provided by Jan Karlsleder. He is a post doc at the Laboratory of Cell Biology and Genetics at Rockfeller University. The pictures were taken with an Atomic Force Microscope with the help of Liwei Chen from the Lieber Group here at Harvard.

Past cool pictures...