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Updated: Mar 21, 2026
Studying DNA Looping by Single-Molecule FRET
Published on: June 28, 2014
Scanning Single-Molecule Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy Enables Kinetics Study of DNA Hairpin Folding with a
Huimin Bi1, Yandong Yin1, Bailong Pan1
1Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, State Key Laboratory for Structural Chemistry of Unstable and Stable Species, Department of Chemical Biology, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, and Biodynamic Optical Imaging Center (BIOPIC), Peking University , Beijing 100871, China.
Abstract:
Single-molecule fluorescence measurements have been widely used to explore kinetics and dynamics of biological systems. Among them, single-molecule imaging (SMI) is good at tracking processes slower than tens of milliseconds, whereas fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) is good at probing processes faster than submilliseconds. However, there is still shortage of simple yet effective single-molecule fluorescence method to cover the time-scale between submilliseconds and tens of milliseconds. To effectively bridge this millisecond gap, we developed a single-molecule fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (smFCS) method that works on surface-immobilized single molecules through surface scanning. We validated it by monitoring the classical DNA hairpin folding process. With a wide time window from microseconds to seconds, the experimental data are well fitted to the two-state folding model. All relevant molecular parameters, including the relative fluorescence brightness, equilibrium constant, and reaction rate constants, were uniquely determined.
