Single molecule methods can provide detailed information about molecular mechanisms and interactions, complementing bulk assays with additional information that is often difficult or impossible to observe using traditional methods
By analyzing the behavior of individual particles, single molecule methods provide access to details of a population’s characteristics that are obscured by ensemble averaging. For instance, these methods allow direct observation of:
- molecular sub-populations
- short-lived or transient states
- rare molecular events
- non-uniform kinetics
- mechanical and thermodynamic information about mechanochemical events in individual molecules
