Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Nettels D
PROVIDER: S-EPMC1815237 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Feb
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Nettels Daniel D Gopich Irina V IV Hoffmann Armin A Schuler Benjamin B
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20070214 8
We use the statistics of photon emission from single molecules to probe the ultrafast dynamics of an unfolded protein via Förster resonance energy transfer. Global reconfiguration of the chain occurs on a time scale of approximately equal to 50 ns and slows down concomitant with chain collapse under folding conditions. These diffusive dynamics provide a missing link between the phenomenological chemical kinetics commonly used in protein folding and a physical description in terms of quantitative ...[more]