Advancing Single-molecule Assays

Single-molecule studies are a powerful means to study the dynamics and energetics of biological molecules and biomolecular complexes. These studies are limited by instrumentation resolution and assay efficiency. Historically, AFM was considered to have force resolution of ~5–20 pN and to suffer from significant instrumental drift. Over the last 15 years, we have substantially improved the precision, stability, and temporal resolution of bioAFM, culminating in studying membrane-protein unfolding with a 100-fold improvement in time resolution and a 10-fold improvement in force precision.