A fit-less approach to the elasticity of the handles in optical tweezers experiments.

The elastic properties of the double-stranded DNA handles used in optical tweezers experiments on biomolecules are customarily modeled by an extensible worm-like chain model. Fitting such a model to experimental data, however, is no trivial task, as the function depends on four parameters in a highly non-linear fashion. We hereby propose a method to bypass the fitting procedure and obtain an empirical force vs. extension curve that accurately reproduces the elasticity of the handles.