Tracking the 3D Rotational Dynamics in Nanoscopic Biological Systems

The rotation of an object cannot be fully tracked without understanding a set of three angles, namely, roll, pitch, and yaw. Tracking these angles as a three-degrees-of-freedom (3-DoF) rotation is a fundamental measurement, facilitating, for example, attitude control of a ship, image stabilization to reduce camera shake, and self-driving cars. Until now, however, there has been no method to track 3-DoF rotation to measure nanometer-scale dynamics in biomolecules and live cells. Here we show that 3-DoF rotation of biomolecules can be visualized via nitrogen-vacancy centers in a fluorescent nanodiamond using a tomographic vector magnetometry technique. We demonstrate application of the method to three different types of biological systems. First, we tracked the rotation of a single molecule of the motor protein F1-ATPase by attaching a nanodiamond to the γ-subunit. We visualized the 3-step rotation of the motor in 3D space and, moreover, a delay of ATP binding or ADP release step in the catalytic reaction. Second, we attached a nanodiamond to a membrane protein in live cells to report on cellular membrane dynamics, showing that 3D rotational motion of the membrane protein correlates with intracellular cytoskeletal density. Last, we used the method to track nonrandom motions in the intestine of Caenorhabditis elegans. Collectively, our findings show that the method can record nanoscale 3-DoF rotation in vitro, in cells, and even in vivo. 3-DoF rotation tracking introduces a new perspective on microscopic biological samples, revealing in greater detail the functional mechanisms due to nanoscale dynamics in molecules and cells.