LUMICKS C-TRAP

Project Summary
In this proposal we request funds to purchase a LUMICKS C‐Trap® from LUMICKS USA Inc.
This is a cutting‐edge instrument combining multi‐trap optical tweezers, multi‐color
fluorescence confocal microscopy and multi‐channel microfluidics. The instrument provides
extremely precise ways to manipulate single molecules or biomolecular aggregates, while
monitoring forces and motions with sub‐pN and sub‐nm resolution, and, at the same time,
imaging with single‐molecule resolution. The microfluidic systems allows the user to rapidly
vary solution conditions during experiments. This instrument brings a new dimension to the
study of biomolecular dynamics and cell biology, that of force, up to now limited to custom‐
designed specialty equipment in very few laboratories worldwide, built and operated by
highly trained specialists. The C‐Trap® will support applications ranging from the study of
DNA enzymes, cytoskeletal motors, subcellular force transmission, the fusion of virus
particles to host cells, the function of mechanosensitive channels, the forces exerted and
the signals received by cellular filopodia, cell adhesion, to cellular force fluctuations and
reactions to mechanical signals.
The C‐Trap® will be housed in the interdisciplinary Duke French Family Science Center,
housing parts of the chemistry, biology and physics departments, within the Advanced Light
Imaging & Spectroscopy (ALIS) laboratory, and will be managed and maintained by the Light
Microscopy Central Facility (LMCF). It will be easily accessible to the initial major and minor
user group of 14 PIs from Duke's Trinity School of Arts and Sciences, the Pratt Engineering
School and the Duke University Medical School as well as from the School of Medicine of the
University of North Carolina and the Department of Physics of North Carolina State
University. It will be the only such instrument at Duke University and in the research
triangle.