Biological molecular motors (or biomolecular motors for short) are nature's solution to the
efficient conversion of chemical energy to mechanical movement. In biological systems …

Cellular and tissue biosystems emerge from the assembly of their constituent molecules and
obtain a set of specific material properties. To measure these properties and understand …

Cooperation is a strategy that has been adopted by groups of organisms to execute complex
tasks more efficiently than single entities. Cooperation increases the robustness and …

Observation of the Brownian motion of a small probe interacting with its environment
provides one of the main strategies for characterizing soft matter,,,. Essentially, two …

Quantifying the mechanical response of the biological milieu (such as the cell's interior) and
complex fluids (such as biomolecular condensates) would enable a better understanding of …

INTRODUCTION Cytoskeletal motors drive many essential mechanical processes inside
cells. For example, kinesin motors are key for cell division or vesicle transport. Kinesin-1 …

Demonstration of the light radiation pressure on a microscopic level by A. Ashkin led to the
invention of optical tweezers (OT). Applied in the studies of living systems, OT have become …

The ability to manipulate small particles of matter using the forces of light, optical trap**,
forms the basis of a number of exciting research areas, spanning fundamental physics …

Friction limits the operation of macroscopic engines and is critical to the performance of
micromechanical devices. We report measurements of friction in a biological nanomachine …

Optical tweezers are exquisite position and force transducers and are widely used for high-
resolution measurements in fields as varied as physics, biology and materials science …