title: Untangling reaction pathways through modern approaches to high-throughput single-molecule force-spectroscopy experiments.
abstract: Single-molecule experiments provide a unique means for real-time observation of the activity of individual biomolecular machines. Through such techniques, insights into the mechanics of for example, polymerases, helicases, and packaging motors have been gleaned. Here we describe the recent advances in single-molecule force spectroscopy instrumentation that have facilitated high-throughput acquisition at high spatiotemporal resolution. The large datasets attained by such methods can capture rare but important events, and contain information regarding stochastic behaviors covering many orders of magnitude in time. We further discuss analysis of such data sets, and with a special focus on the pause states described in the general literature on RNA polymerase pausing we compare and contrast the signatures of different reaction pathways.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PU, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Dulin
authors.affiliation: Department of Bionanoscience, Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, Delft University of Technology, Lorentzweg 1, 2628 CJ Delft, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Bojk A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Berghuis
authors.affiliation: Department of Bionanoscience, Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, Delft University of Technology, Lorentzweg 1, 2628 CJ Delft, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Depken
authors.affiliation: Department of Bionanoscience, Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, Delft University of Technology, Lorentzweg 1, 2628 CJ Delft, The Netherlands. Electronic address: n.h.dekker@tudelft.nl.
authors.forename: Nynke H
authors.initials: NH
authors.lastname: Dekker
mesh_terms: D004247:DNA / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D004268:DNA-Binding Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D012321:DNA-Directed RNA Polymerases / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D013057:Spectrum Analysis / Q000379:methods
chemical_list: D004268:DNA-Binding Proteins; D004247:DNA; D012321:DNA-Directed RNA Polymerases