Single-molecular methodologies for the physical biology of protein machines

doi:10.1088/1674-1056/ac98a2

Abstract Physical biology is an interdisciplinary field that bridges biology with physical sciences and engineering. Single-molecule physical biology focuses on dynamics of individual biomolecules and complexes, aiming to answering basic questions about their functions and mechanisms. It takes advantages of physical methodologies to gain quantitative understanding of biological processes, often engaging precise physical measurements of reconstructed objects to avoid interference from unnecessary complications. In this review, we (i) briefly introduce concepts of single-molecule physical biology, (ii) describe extensively used single-molecule methodologies that have been developed to address key questions in two important objects of single-molecule physical biology, namely, nucleic acid-interacting proteins and membrane-interacting proteins, and (iii) show by a few successful examples how one may use single-molecule methods to deepen our understanding of protein machines.

Keywords: physical biology single-molecules research object reconstruction precise measurements

Received: 29 July 2022
Revised: 21 September 2022
Accepted manuscript online: 10 October 2022

PACS:	87.80.Nj	(Single-molecule techniques)
	87.14.gk	(DNA)
	87.64.kv	(Fluorescence)
	87.14.E-	(Proteins)

Fund: This work is supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2019YFA0709304), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 12090051 and 12022409), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDB37000000), and the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of CAS (Grant Nos. 2021009 and Y2021003). We sincerely apologize to the authors whose work could not be included because of the scope of this review. We thank Prof. Wei Li (Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences), Prof. Hui Li (Beijing Normal University), Dr. Jianbing Ma (Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences) and Dr. Dongfei Ma (Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory) for their kind discussion and figure preparation.

Corresponding Authors: Ming Li
E-mail: mingli@iphy.ac.cn

Cite this article:

Shuang Wang(王爽), Ying Lu(陆颖), and Ming Li(李明) Single-molecular methodologies for the physical biology of protein machines 2022 Chin. Phys. B 31 128702

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