This project will develop techniques for confining and studying the behavior of single molecules in nanocontainers and nanotubes. The nanocontainers are microscopic water droplets in an immiscible medium that can be trapped by focused laser beams (optical tweezers). This technology enables the rapid mixing of the contents of water droplets at the sub-femtoliter volume level for studying transient complexes and non-equilibrium biomolecular phenomena. The nanotubes are created by pulling on the membrane of a polymer vesicle (polymersome) using optical tweezers. The polymer nanotube-vesicle structure is stabilized by chemical and/or UV-induced cross-linking. We propose to study the transport of long molecules down such nanoscale conduits