Single-Molecule Biophysical Techniques to Study Actomyosin Force Transduction.

Abstract

Inside the cellular environment, molecular motors can work in concert to conduct a variety of important physiological functions and processes that are vital for the survival of a cell. However, in order to decipher the mechanism of how these molecular motors work, single-molecule microscopy techniques have been popular methods to understand the molecular basis of the emerging ensemble behavior of these motor proteins.In this chapter, we discuss various single-molecule biophysical imaging techniques that have been used to expose the mechanics and kinetics of myosins. The chapter should be taken as a general overview and introductory guide to the many existing techniques; however, since other chapters will discuss some of these techniques more thoroughly, the readership should refer to those chapters for further details and discussions. In particular, we will focus on scattering-based single-molecule microscopy methods, some of which have become more popular in the recent years and around which the work in our laboratories has been centered.