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Non-coding RNA sequences play a great role in controlling a number of cellular functions, thus raising the need to understand their complex conformational dynamics in quantitative detail. In this perspective, we first show that single…
In recent years single molecule force spectroscopy has opened a new avenue to provide profiles of the complex energy landscape of biomolecules. In this field, quantitative analyses of the data employing sound theoretical models, have played…
Single molecule mechanical unfolding experiments are beginning to provide profiles of the complex energy landscape of biomolecules. In order to obtain reliable estimates of the energy landscape characteristics it is necessary to combine the…
We investigate irreversibility and dissipation in single molecules that cooperatively fold/unfold in a two state manner under the action of mechanical force. We apply path thermodynamics to derive analytical expressions for the average…
In recent years, single molecule force techniques have opened a new avenue to decipher the folding landscapes of biopolymers by allowing us to watch and manipulate the dynamics of individual proteins and nucleic acids. In single molecule…
Most single-molecule studies derive the kinetic rates of native, intermediate, and unfolded states from equilibrium hopping experiments. Here, we apply Kramers kinetic diffusive model to derive the force-dependent kinetic rates of…
Single molecule force spectroscopy provide details of the underlying energy surfaces of proteins which are essential to the understanding of their unfolding process. Recently, it has been observed experimentally that by pulling proteins in…
Single molecule force spectroscopy methods can be used to generate folding trajectories of biopolymers from arbitrary regions of the folding landscape. We illustrate the complexity of the folding kinetics and generic aspects of the collapse…
Detecting conformational transitions in molecular systems is key to understanding biological processes. Here, we investigate the force variance in single-molecule pulling experiments as an indicator of molecular folding transitions. We…
The sequence-dependent folding landscapes of nucleic acid hairpins reflect much of the complexity of biomolecular folding. Folding trajectories, generated using single molecule force clamp experiments by attaching semiflexible polymers to…
DNA hairpin molecules with periodic base sequences can be expected to exhibit a regular coarse-grained free energy landscape (FEL) as function of the number of open base pairs and applied mechanical force. Using a commonly employed model,…
Single-molecule force spectroscopy has opened a new field of research in molecular biophysics and biochemistry. Pulling experiments on individual proteins permit us to monitor conformational transitions with high temporal resolution and…
We investigate the thermodynamics and kinetics of DNA hairpins that fold/unfold under the action of applied mechanical force. We introduce the concept of the molecular free energy landscape and derive simplified expressions for the force…
We apply Kramers theory to investigate the dissociation of multiple bonds under mechanical force and interpret experimental results for the unfolding/refolding force distributions of an RNA hairpin pulled at different loading rates using…
The remarkable accuracy and versatility of single-molecule techniques make possible new measurements that are not feasible in bulk assays. Among these, the precise estimation of folding free energies using fluctuation theorems in…
The process of protein folding from an unfolded state to a biologically active, folded conformation is governed by many parameters e.g the sequence of amino acids, intermolecular interactions, the solvent, temperature and chaperon…
We introduce a model of thermalized conformations in space of RNA -or single stranded DNA- molecules, which includes the possibility of hairpin formation. This model contains the usual secondary structure information, but extends it to the…
We review statistical-mechanical theories of single-molecule micromanipulation experiments on nucleic acids. First, models for describing polymer elasticity are introduced. We then review how these models are used to interpret…
Understanding how monomeric proteins fold under in vitro conditions is crucial to describing their functions in the cellular context. Significant advances both in theory and experiments have resulted in a conceptual framework for describing…
Single molecule force spectroscopy reveals unfolding of domains in titin upon stretching. We provide a theoretical framework for these experiments by computing the phase diagrams for force-induced unfolding of single domain proteins using…