Undergraduate Custom Designed Cost Effective IR Optical Tweezer Set Up fo DNA Applications

Our research team, ISLAND CURE, is a multidisciplinary team of professors and undergraduate students with the goal to design and build instruments to make biological measurements on a limited budget. One of the apparatuses we are designing, is optical tweezers, which are a Nobel Prize-winning technology capable of trapping microscopic and sub-microscopic particles using a laser beam. Using a 1064 nm beam, we will trap a single strand of DNA using beads and this will enable us to exert minute forces upon the DNA. This experiment will give us a better understanding of the forces on damaged DNA; specifically, the damages that lead to mutations and cancer. With this knowledge our goal is to be able to provide insight into mutagenesis and cancer development, and ideally how to treat and prevent them. This presentation will update on the present development of our cost effective, custom IR tweezers.