Single-molecule biophysics: at the interface of biology, physics and chemistry

摘要

Single-molecule methods have matured into powerful and popular tools to probe the complexnbehaviour of biological molecules, due to their unique abilities to probe molecular structure,ndynamics and function, unhindered by the averaging inherent in ensemble experiments. Thisnreview presents an overview of the burgeoning field of single-molecule biophysics, discussingnkey highlights and selected examples from its genesis to our projections for its future.nFollowing brief introductions to a few popular single-molecule fluorescence and manipulationnmethods, we discuss novel insights gained from single-molecule studies in key biological areasnranging from biological folding to experiments performed in vivo.