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Updated: May 30, 2026

Light-driven Molecular Motors on Surfaces for Single Molecular Imaging
Published on: March 13, 2019
Microsecond resolution of single-molecule rotation catalyzed by molecular motors
Tassilo Hornung1, James Martin, David Spetzler
1Faculty of Biomedicine and Biotechnology, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA.
Abstract:
Single-molecule measurements of rotation catalyzed by the F(1)-ATPase or the F(o)F(1) ATP synthase have provided new insights into the molecular mechanisms of the F(1) and F(o) molecular motors. We recently developed a method to record ATPase-driven rotation of F(1) or F(o)F(1) in a manner that solves several technical limitations of earlier approaches that were significantly hampered by time and angular resolution, and restricted the duration of data collection. With our approach it is possible to collect data for hours and obtain statistically significant quantities of data on each molecule examined with a time resolution of up to 5 μs at unprecedented signal-to-noise.

