Related papers: A Single-Molecule Hershey-Chase Experiment
The mechanical properties of molecules are today captured by single molecule manipulation experiments, so that polymer features are tested at a nanometric scale. Yet devising mathematical models to get further insight beyond the commonly…
Adaptation of the chemotaxis sensory pathway of the bacterium Escherichia coli is integral for detecting chemicals over a wide range of background concentrations, ultimately allowing cells to swim towards sources of attractant and away from…
Charge diffusion through desoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a physico-chemical phenomenon that on the one hand is being explored for technological purposes, on the other hand is applied by nature for various informational processes in life.…
Particles with ligand-receptor contacts bind and unbind fluctuating "legs" to surfaces, whose fluctuations cause the particle to diffuse. Quantifying the diffusion of such "nanoscale caterpillars" is a challenge, since binding events often…
The translocation of a macromolecule through a nanometer-sized pore is an interesting process with important applications in the development of biosensors for single--molecule analysis and in drug delivery and gene therapy. We have carried…
High-throughput molecular screening is required to investigate the origin and diffusion of antimicrobial resistance in pathogen outbreaks. The most frequent cause of human infection is Escherichia coli, which is dominated by sequence type…
Single-particle tracking allows to infer the motion of single molecules in living cells. When we observe a long trajectory (more than 100 points), it is possible that the particle switches mode of motion over time. Then, fitting a single…
Navigation of microorganisms is controlled by internal processes ultimately sensitive to mechanical or chemical signaling encountered along the path. In many natural environments, such as porous soils or physiological ducts, motile species…
We consider voltage-driving DNA translocation through a nanopore in the present study. By assuming the DNA is coaxial with the cylindrical nanopore, a hydrodynamic model for determining effective force on a single DNA molecule in a nanopore…
We have micromachined a silicon-chip device that transports DNA with a Brownian ratchet that rectifies the Brownian motion of microscopic particles. Transport properties for a DNA 50mer agree with theoretical predictions, and the DNA…
The movement of molecules inside living cells is a fundamental feature of biological processes. The ability to both observe and analyse the details of molecular diffusion in vivo at the single molecule and single cell level can add…
Biofilms are a cluster of bacteria embedded in extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) that contain a complex composition of polysaccharides, proteins, and extracellular DNA (eDNA). Desirable mechanical properties of the biofilms are…
The detection of biomolecules at the single molecular level have important applications in the fields of biosensing and biomedical diagnosis. Solid state nanopore (SS-nanopore) is an effective tool to perform the single molecular detection,…
The near-surface swimming patterns of bacteria are strongly determined by the hydrodynamic interactions between bacteria and the surface, which trap bacteria in smooth circular trajectories that lead to inefficient surface exploration.…
After crossing an initial barrier to break the first base-pair (bp) in double-stranded DNA, the disruption of further bps is characterized by free energies between less than one to a few kT. This causes the opening of intermittent…
Bacteriophage viruses, one of the most abundant entities in our planet, lack the ability to move independently. Instead, they crowd fluid environments in anticipation of a random encounter with a bacterium. Once they land on the cell body…
Single-molecule experiments provide new insights into biological processes hitherto not accessible by measurements performed on bulk systems. We report on a study of the kinetics of a triple-branch DNA molecule with four conformational…
Motile bacteria are known to accumulate at surfaces, eventually leading to changes in bacterial motility and bio-film formation. We use a novel two-colour, three-dimensional Lagrangian tracking technique, to follow simultaneously the body…
Solid-state nanopore DNA sequencers present mechanical and chemical stability, reusability, and large-scale integrability. However, their development is hindered by the absence of a protein-free mechanism for controlling DNA translocation,…
Motivated by recent single molecule studies of proteins sliding on a DNA molecule, we explore the targeting dynamics of N particles ("proteins") sliding diffusively along a line ("DNA") in search of their target site (specific target…