Session Q43: Invited Session: Techniques to Study Dynamic Cellular Processes One Molecule at a Time (Including Delbruck Award Lecture)

Max Delbruck Prize in Biological Physics Lecture: Single-molecule protein folding and transition paths

The transition path is the tiny fraction of an equilibrium molecular trajectory when a transition occurs by crossing the free energy barrier between two states. It is a uniquely single-molecule property, and has not yet been observed experimentally for any system in the condensed phase. The importance of the transition path in protein folding is that it contains all of the mechanistic information on how a protein folds. As a major step toward observing transition paths, we have determined the average transition-path time for a fast and a slow-folding protein from a photon-by-photon analysis of fluorescence trajectories in single-molecule FRET experiments. While the folding rate coefficients differ by 10,000-fold, surprisingly, the transition-path times differ by less than 5-fold, showing that a successful barrier crossing event takes almost the same time for a fast- and a slow-folding protein, i.e. almost the same time to fold when it actually happens.   

ATP-induced helicase slippage reveals highly coordinated subunits

Helicases are vital enzymes that carry out strand separation of duplex nucleic acids during replication, repair and recombination. T7 helicase, a model hexameric motor, has been observed to use dTTP, but not ATP, to unwind dsDNA as it translocates along ssDNA. Whether and how different subunits of the helicase coordinate their chemo-mechanical activities and DNA binding during translocation is still under debate. Here we address this question using a single-molecule approach to monitor helicase unwinding. We found that T7 helicase does in fact unwind dsDNA in the presence of ATP and that the unwinding rate is even faster than that with dTTP. However, unwinding was repeatedly interrupted by sudden slippage events, ultimately preventing unwinding over a substantial distance. This behaviour was greatly reduced with the supplement of a small amount of dTTP. These findings presented an opportunity to use nucleotide mixtures to investigate helicase subunit coordination. Our results support a model where nearly all subunits coordinate their chemo-mechanical activities and DNA binding. Such subunit coordination may be general to many ring-shaped helicases and reveals a potential mechanism for regulation of DNA unwinding during replication.   

Unraveling the motion of single-stranded DNA binding proteins on DNA using force and fluorescence spectroscopy

Single-stranded DNA binding (SSB) proteins bind to and control the accessibility of single stranded (ss) DNA generated as a transient intermediate during a variety of cellular processes. For subsequent DNA processing, however, such a tightly wrapped, high-affinity protein--DNA complex still needs to be removed or repositioned quickly for unhindered action of other proteins. Here we show, using single-molecule two- and three-colour fluorescence resonance energy transfer, that SSB can spontaneously migrate along ssDNA. Diffusional migration of SSB helps in the local displacement of SSB by an elongating RecA filament. SSB diffusion also melts short DNA hairpins transiently and stimulates RecA filament elongation on DNA with secondary structure. This observation of diffusional movement of a protein on ssDNA introduces a new model for how an SSB protein can be redistributed, while remaining tightly bound to ssDNA during recombination and repair processes. In addition, using an optomechanical tool combining single-molecule fluorescence and force methods, we probed how proteins with such a large binding site size ($\sim $ 65 nucleotides) can migrate rapidly on DNA and how protein-protein interactions and tension may modulate the motion. We observed force-induced progressive unravelling of ssDNA from the SSB surface between 1 and 6 pN, followed by SSB dissociation at $\sim $10 pN, and obtained experimental evidence of a reptation mechanism for protein movement along DNA wherein a protein slides via DNA bulge formation and propagation. SSB diffusion persists even when bound with RecO, and at forces under which the fully wrapped state is perturbed, suggesting that even in crowded cellular conditions SSB can act as a sliding platform to recruit and carry its interacting proteins for use in DNA replication, recombination and repair.   

Beholding the subcellular world in your PALM: nanometer resolution optical measurements of protein assemblies in cells

Key to understanding a protein's biological function is the accurate determination of its spatial distribution inside a cell. Although fluorescent protein markers enable specific targeting with molecular precision, much of this utility is lost when the resultant fusions are imaged with conventional, diffraction-limited optics. In response, several imaging modalities that rely on the stochastic activation and bleaching of single molecules, and that are capable of resolution 10x below the diffraction limit (250 nm for visible wavelengths), have emerged. This talk will cover superresolution imaging of biological structures using photoactivated localization microscopy (PALM). In addition to covering the theory, we will also discuss the use of the technique in understanding biological phenomena on the nanoscale, including the organization of bacterial chemoreceptors, the movement of actin in neuronal spines, and the stratification of focal adhesions.   

Single-molecule conductance measurements of biomolecule translocation across biomimetic nuclear pores

After a brief overview of our recent work on solid-state nanopores, I will present single-molecule transport data across biomimetic nanopores that contain the key regulating parts of the nuclear pore complex (NPC). The mechanism for the remarkable selectivity of NPCs has remained unclear in a large part due to difficulties in designing experiments that can probe the transport at the relevant length and time scales. Building and measuring on biomimetic NPCs provides new opportunities to address this long-standing problem. covalently tether the natively unfolded Phe-Gly rich domains (FG-domains) of human nuclear binding proteins to a solid-state nanopore (a 10-100 nm sized hole in a SiN membrane). Ionic current measurements provide a probe to monitor single molecules that traverse the pore. Translocation events are observed for transport receptors (Imp$\beta )$, whereas transport of passive molecules (BSA) is found to be blocked. Interestingly, a single type of nuclear pore proteins appears already sufficient to form a selective barrier for transport. A translocation time of about 2.5 ms is measured for Imp$\beta $. This time is found to be similar for transport across Nup153 and Nup98 coated pores, although the observed ionic conductance differs between these two types of pores. We compare two simple models for the pore conductance and find, for both Nups, that the data fits best to a model with an open central channel and a condensed layer along the outer circumference of the pore. reproducing the key features of the NPC, our biomimetic approach opens the way to study a wide variety of nucleo-cytoplasmic transport processes at the single-molecule level in vitro.