Revealing transient events of molecular recognition via super-localization imaging of single-particle motion

Molecular recognition plays an important role in biological systems and relates to a wide range of applications in disease diagnostics and therapeutics. Studies based on steady state or ensemble analysis may mask critical dynamic information of single recognition events. Here we report a study of monitoring the transient molecular recognition via single particle motion. We utilized a super-localization imaging methodology, to comprehensively evaluate the rotational Brownian motion of a single nanoparticle in spatial-temporal-frequential domain, with a spatial accuracy ~20 nm and a temporal resolution of ~10 ms. The transient moment of molecular encountering was captured and different binding modes were discriminated. We observed that the transient recognition events were not static states of on or off, but stochastically undergoes dynamical transformation between different binding modes. This study improves our understanding about the dynamic nature of molecular recognition events beyond the ensemble characterization via binding constant.