English

Dynamic polarizability of macromolecules for single-molecule optical biosensing

Biological Physics 2021-07-15 v2 Optics

Abstract

The structural dynamics of macromolecules is important for most microbiological processes, from protein folding to the origins of neurodegenerative disorders. Noninvasive measurements of these dynamics are highly challenging. Recently, optical sensors have been shown to allow noninvasive time-resolved measurements of the dynamic polarizability of single-molecules. Here we introduce a method to efficiently predict the dynamic polarizability from the atomic configuration of a given macromolecule. This provides a means to connect the measured dynamic polarizability to the underlying structure of the molecule, and therefore to connect temporal measurements to structural dynamics. To illustrate the methodology we calculate the change in polarizability as a function of time based on conformations extracted from molecular dynamics simulations and using different conformations of motor proteins solved crystalographically. This allows us to quantify the magnitude of the changes in polarizablity due to thermal and functional motions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2105.12377,
  title  = {Dynamic polarizability of macromolecules for single-molecule optical biosensing},
  author = {Larnii S. Booth and Eloise V. Browne and Nicolas P. Mauranyapin and Lars S. Madsen and Shelley Barfoot and Alan Mark and Warwick P. Bowen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.12377},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

13 pages, 7 figures. Updated acknowledgements, added additional information (correspondence information)

R2 v1 2026-06-24T02:28:34.846Z