RSC Publishing


Publishing

 

Cover image for Molecular BioSystems, select for current issue

Molecular BioSystems

Research at the interface between chemistry and the -omic sciences and systems biology.



Subscribers

  • PDF
  • HTML article

Non-subscribers

Free access



Review

Mol. BioSyst., 2008, 4, 394 - 403, DOI: 10.1039/b800444g

The importance of surfaces in single-molecule bioscience

Mari-Liis Visnapuu, Daniel Duzdevich and Eric C. Greene

The last ten years have witnessed an explosion of new techniques that can be used to probe the dynamic behavior of individual biological molecules, leading to discoveries that would not have been possible with more traditional biochemical methods. A common feature among these single-molecule approaches is the need for the biological molecules to be anchored to a solid support surface. This must be done under conditions that minimize nonspecific adsorption without compromising the biological integrity of the sample. In this review we highlight why surface attachments are a critical aspect of many single-molecule studies and we discuss current methods for anchoring biomolecules. Finally, we provide a detailed description of a new method developed by our laboratory for anchoring and organizing hundreds of individual DNA molecules on a surface, allowing high-throughput studies of protein–DNA interactions at the single-molecule level.

Graphical abstract image for this article (ID: b800444g)