CNSI ALMS Special Lecture: Versatile tools towards real-time single-molecule biology

Cellular processes are extremely dynamic and ensemble methods of studying these processes fall short in their ability to capture meaningful interactions over the time-scales at which these systems operate. Single-molecule methods have proven to be powerful tools towards understanding key processes, such as DNA transcription, membrane dynamics and protein folding

Lumicks has developed novel biophysical tools to enable the unlocking of biological problems with simple, stand-alone solutions.

The C-Trap™ is the world’s first instrument that integrates optical tweezers, confocal(STED) microscopy and an advanced microfluidics system in a truly correlated manner. The C-Trap™ is capable of live, simultaneous and correlative visualization and manipulation of molecular interactions with sub-picoNewton force resolution and sub-nanometer position resolution. It can acquire information with a kilo-Hz (to mega-Hz) temporal resolution, such that even the fastest event can be captured. These abilities of C-Trap™ allow users to study a wide range of biological models ranging from single molecules, their complex interactions to single cell mechanics.

The AFS on the other hand is the newly developed, high throughput acoustic force modulator capable of studying hundreds of single molecules simultaneously. The AFS is ideal for studying single-molecule mechanics, molecular interactions, cell-molecule and cell-cell interactions.

These experiments show that the technological advances in hybrid single-molecule methods can be turned into an easy-to-use and stable instrument that can open new avenues in numerous research areas.