Single molecule techniques for biomedicine and pharmacology

The present review gives a short summary on techniques useful for single molecule research, describes experiments on in vitro single molecule detection and reactions of single molecules and finally reports on the behavior of single molecules and single virus particles in living cells. One experiment on single molecule enzyme kinetics of lactate dehydrogenase, an enzyme used in the diagnosis of heart attacks and one experiment on restriction analysis of individual DNa molecules are described in some detail. Where it is possible, the relevance to pharmacology and biomedicine is emphasized, often as a perspective or suggestion for experiments, since in this young field of science a not too large variety of experiments have indeed already been devoted directly to drug action.