Forces in biological systems are typically investigated at the single-molecule level with atomic force microscopy or optical and magnetic tweezers, but these techniques suffer from limited data throughput and their requirement for a physical connection to the macroscopic world. We introduce a self-assembled nanoscopic force clamp built from DNA that operates autonomously and allows massive parallelization. Single-stranded DNA sections of an origami structure acted as entropic springs and exerted controlled tension in the low piconewton range on a molecular system, whose conformational transitions were monitored by single-molecule Förster resonance energy transfer. We used the conformer switching of a Holliday junction as a benchmark and studied the TATA-binding protein-induced bending of a DNA duplex under tension. The observed suppression of bending above 10 piconewtons provides further evidence of mechanosensitivity in gene regulation.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 125. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 18 November 2025.
All research outputs
#417,864
of 34,187,751 outputs
Outputs from Science
#10,074
of 93,837 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#6,077
of 339,034 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Science
#170
of 1,159 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,187,751 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 98th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 93,837 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 65.8. This one has done well, scoring higher than 89% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 339,034 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 1,159 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 85% of its contemporaries.
