A second physical method was even more amazing. Physicists had figured out how to trap single molecules in a field and exert forces on them. By doing this, they could actually do things like pull on the mRNA or the nascent chain and measure the force exerted by the ribosome when it translocates from one codon to the next. One of the leaders in this area is Carlos Bustamante at Berkeley, who has teamed up with his colleague Nacho Tinoco (who sadly died recently) and Harry Noller, making a formidable combination with their complementary expertise.
