Single-molecule experiments in biological physics: methods and applications

Abstract

I review single-molecule experiments (SME) in biological physics. Recent technological developments have provided the tools to design and build scientific instruments of high enough sensitivity and precision to manipulate and visualize individual molecules and measure microscopic forces. Using SME it is possible to: manipulate molecules one at a time and measure distributions describing molecular properties; characterize the kinetics of biomolecular reactions and; detect molecular intermediates. SME provide the additional information about thermodynamics and kinetics of biomolecular processes. This complements information obtained in traditional bulk assays. In SME it is also possible to measure small energies and detect large Brownian deviations in biomolecular reactions, thereby offering new methods and systems to scrutinize the basic foundations of statistical mechanics. This review is written at a very introductory level emphasizing the importance of SME to scientists interested in knowing the common playground of ideas and the interdisciplinary topics accessible by these techniques. The review discusses SME from an experimental perspective, first exposing the most common experimental methodologies and later presenting various molecular systems where such techniques have been applied. I briefly discuss experimental techniques such as atomic-force microscopy (AFM), laser optical tweezers (LOT), magnetic tweezers (MT), biomembrane force probe (BFP) and single-molecule fluorescence (SMF). I then present several applications of SME to the study of nucleic acids (DNA, RNA and DNA condensation), proteins (protein-protein interactions, protein folding and molecular motors). Finally, I discuss applications of SME to the study of the nonequilibrium thermodynamics of small systems and the experimental verification of fluctuation theorems. I conclude with a discussion of open questions and future perspectives.