The Fantastic Single-Molecule Techniques

In the past 50 years, single-molecule techniques have been rapidly developed and widely applied in numerous fields of biology, offering insights that conventional biochemical assays cannot discover. In this review, to help fully appreciate the effectiveness of single-molecule methods, we systematically summarize the various advantages of performing biochemical assays at the single-molecule level. To demonstrate that this strategy is not limited to the few representative cases discussed here, we propose a single-molecule polysome profiling technique, taking inspiration from previous examples. Finally, we point out a possibility in the future of unifying different biochemical assays on the platform of single-molecule microscopy, which will reduce the cost of laboratory instrumentation and inevitably promote the adoptability and automation of a variety of biochemical and biophysical methods.