Single-molecule Detection of Ultrafast Biomolecular Dynamics with Nanophotonics.

ABSTRACT: Single-molecule Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) is a versatile technique for probing the structure and dynamics of biomolecules even in heterogeneous ensembles. However, because of the limited fluorescence brightness per molecule and the relatively long fluorescence lifetimes, probing ultrafast structural dynamics in the nanosecond time scale has thus far been very challenging. Here, we demonstrate that nanophotonic fluorescence enhancement in zero-mode waveguides enables measurements of previously inaccessible low-nanosecond dynamics by dramatically improving time resolution and reduces data acquisition times by more than an order of magnitude. As a prototypical example, we use this approach to probe the dynamics of a short intrinsically disordered peptide that were previously in

SUBMITTER: Nuesch MF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12757800 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature