npj Biosensing - Accurate label free classification of cancerous extracellular vesicles using nanoaperture optical tweezers and deep learning

The 2026 Gordon Research Conference on Single Molecule Approaches to Biology will be held in Les Diablerets, Vaud (fr) Switzerland. Apply today to reserve your spot.

Current single-molecule techniques to characterize proteins typically require labels, tethers, or the use of non-native solution conditions. Such changes ...

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) and proteins with intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) are integral to many biological processes, including neurotransmitter regulation, microtubule regulat...

The 2025 Gordon Research Conference on Label-Free Single Molecule Sensing will be held in Easton, Massachusetts. Apply today to reserve your spot.

Nanoaperture optical tweezers allow for trapping single proteins and detecting their conformational changes without modifying the protein, i.e., being free from labels or tethers. While past works have used laser heating as a way to vary the local temperature, this does not allow for probing of lower temperature values. Here we investigate the lower temperature dynamics of individual Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA) proteins with the help of a custom Peltier cooling stage. The BSA transitions between the normal (N) and fast (F) states. The normal form of BSA has a maximum occupancy at 21 ± 1 °C, which is interpreted as its maximum stability point for the compact N form with respect to the F form. In this way, it is possible to find the relative thermodynamic parameters of single proteins without requiring any modifications to the intrinsic structure.

npj Biosensing - Direct observation of small molecule activator binding to single PR65 protein

npj Biosensing - Direct observation of small molecule activator binding to single PR65 protein