PCseminarabstr_190206
Proteins are dynamic in nature. The molecules undergo thermal motion and structural changes, bind to and dissociate from interaction partners, and traverse a range of energy and chemical states during their functional activity. For such entities, directly and simultaneously observing their function, structure and dynamics is a most straightforward approach to deciphering how they operate to function. To make this observation possible, we developed high-speed atomic force microscopy (HS-AFM) capable of real time, high-resolution imaging of individual molecules in action. Dynamic images of molecules acquired with HS-AFM allows us to provide deeper mechanistic insights into the molecular process of their functional activity, as demonstrated for myosin V walking on actin filaments, rotor-less F1-ATPase with rotational propagation of chemical and structural states over the subunits, and others. After brief descriptions of techniques involved in HS-AFM, several AFM movies of proteins will be shown together with their molecular mechanisms of action directly revealed from the movies.