Unveiling the influence of device stiffness in single macromolecule unfolding

Abstract

Single-molecule stretching experiments on DNA, RNA, and other biological macromolecules opened up the possibility of an impressive progress in many fields of life and medical sciences. The reliability of such experiments may be crucially limited by the possibility of determining the influence of the apparatus on the experimental outputs. Here we deduce a model that let us analytically evaluate such influence, fundamental for the interpretation of Single Molecule Force Spectroscopy experiments and intermolecular interactions phenomena. As we show, our model is coherent with previous numerical results and quantitively reproduce AFM experimental tests on titin macromolecules and P-selectin with variable probe stiffnesses.