Related papers: Single-molecule biophysics
Single-molecule biophysics has transformed our understanding of the fundamental molecular processes involved in living biological systems, but also of the fascinating physics of life. Far more exotic than a collection of exemplars of soft…
Biomolecules carry out very specialized tasks inside the cell where energies involved are few tens of k_BT, small enough for thermal fluctuations to be relevant in many biomolecular processes. In this paper I discuss a few concepts and…
In the past decades, advances in microscopy have made it possible to study the dynamics of individual biomolecules in vitro and resolve intramolecular kinetics that would otherwise be hidden in ensemble averages. More recently,…
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…
Here, we discuss a collection of cutting-edge techniques and applications in use today by some of the leading experts in the field of correlative approaches in single-molecule biophysics. A key difference in emphasis, compared with…
Single-molecule pulling techniques have emerged as versatile tools for probing the noncovalent forces holding together the secondary and tertiary structure of macromolecules. They also constitute a way to study at the single-molecule level…
Life is characterized by a myriad of complex dynamic processes allowing organisms to grow, reproduce, and evolve. Physical approaches for describing systems out of thermodynamic equilibrium have been increasingly applied to living systems,…
In the past 40 years, single-molecule techniques have been rapidly developed and widely applied in numerous fields of biology researches, offering new insights that conventional biochemical assays cannot discover. In this review, to help…
The multifarious internal workings of organisms are difficult to reconcile with a single feature defining a state of being alive. Indeed, definitions of life rely on emergent properties (growth, capacity to evolve, agency) only symptomatic…
The internal dynamics of strongly interacting systems and that of biomolecules such as proteins display several important analogies, despite the huge difference in their characteristic energy and length scales. For example, in all such…
The biomolecules in and around a living cell -- proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, carbohydrates -- continuously sample myriad conformational states that are thermally accessible at physiological temperatures. Simultaneously, a given…
The biological cell exhibits a fantastic range of behaviors, but ultimately these are governed by a handful of physical and chemical principles. Here we explore simple theory, known for decades and based on the simple thermodynamics of…
Molecular machines transduce free energy between different forms throughout all living organisms. While truly machines in their own right, unlike their macroscopic counterparts molecular machines are characterized by stochastic…
Biomolecular machines are protein complexes that convert between different forms of free energy. They are utilized in nature to accomplish many cellular tasks. As isothermal nonequilibrium stochastic objects at low Reynolds number, they…
In recent years molecular elasticity has emerged as an active area of research: there are experiments that probe mechanical properties of single biomolecules such as DNA and Actin, with a view to understanding the role of elasticity of…
Both classical and quantum electrodynamics predict the existence of dipole-dipole long-range electrodynamic intermolecular forces; however, these have never been hitherto experimentally observed. The discovery of completely new and…
Motility is an essential factor for an organism's survival and diversification. With the advent of novel single-cell technologies, analytical frameworks and theoretical methods, we can begin to probe the complex lives of microscopic motile…
The esteemed physicist Erwin Schroedinger, whose name is associated with the most notorious equation of quantum mechanics, also wrote a brief essay entitled 'What is Life?', asking: 'How can the events in space and time which take place…
To illustrate the power of the biophysical approach in solving important problems in life science, I present here one of our current research projects as an example. We have developed special biophotonic techniques to study the dynamic…
Radioactive molecules provide a powerful new platform in the search for new physics at energy scales complementary to high-energy particle colliders. By combining enhancements from nuclear properties with the sensitivity and control offered…