A team of researchers led by Professor Sebastian Deindl at Uppsala University has developed a pioneering method that vastly improves the ability to observe and analyze complex biological processes at the single-molecule level. Their work is set to be published in the upcoming issue of the journal Science . With our new technique, we can now extend single-molecule biophysics to the genome scale.
This advance is expected to significantly deepen our understanding of how nucleic-acid interacting proteins function in both health and disease." Professor Sebastian Deindl, senior author of the study The method, which is called MUSCLE (MUltiplexed Single-molecule Characterization at the Library scalE), opens the door to more accurate and comprehensive studies of biological systems, where understanding the full spectrum of molecular behaviour is critical. It is expected to have a profound impact on the study of complex molecular dynamics as a function of sequence or chemical space, enabling researchers to explore previously uncharted territories in biology.
The newly developed method overcomes a significant limitation in the field of single-molecule fluorescence microscopy, which until now has been restricted by low throughput due to the laborious nature of analysing one sample at a time. Traditional approaches have been limited to studying a small number of representative samples, which could lead to biases and missed opportunities for discovering novel insights within large libraries.