The review is devoted to describing the current state of physical and chemical methods used for studying the structural and functional bases of vital processes. Special attention is focused on the physical methods that have opened a new page in the research on the structure of biological macromolecules. They include primarily the methods of detecting and manipulating single molecules using optical and magnetic tweezers. New physical methods, such as 2D infrared spectroscopy, fluorescence correlation spectroscopy, and magnetic resonance microscopy are also analyzed briefly in the review. The path that physics and biology have passed for the last 55 years shows that there is no single method providing all necessary information on macromolecules and their interactions. Each method provides its view of the system in space and time. All physical methods are complementary. It is complementarity that is the fundamental idea justifying the existence in practice of all physical methods the description of which was the aim of the review.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Physical methods and molecular biology
I. N. Serdyuk
The review is devoted to describing the current state of physical and chemical methods used for studying the structural and functional bases of vital processes. Special attention is focused on the physical methods that have opened a new page in the research on the structure of biological macromolecules. They include primarily the methods of detecting and manipulating single molecules using optical and magnetic tweezers. New physical methods, such as 2D infrared spectroscopy, fluorescence correlation spectroscopy, and magnetic resonance microscopy are also analyzed briefly in the review. The path that physics and biology have passed for the last 55 years shows that there is no single method providing all necessary information on macromolecules and their interactions. Each method provides its view of the system in space and time. All physical methods are complementary. It is complementarity that is the fundamental idea justifying the existence in practice of all physical methods the description of which was the aim of the review.
The review is devoted to describing the current state of physical and chemical methods used for studying the structural and functional bases of vital processes. Special attention is focused on the physical methods that have opened a new page in the research on the structure of biological macromolecules. They include primarily the methods of detecting and manipulating single molecules using optical and magnetic tweezers. New physical methods, such as 2D infrared spectroscopy, fluorescence correlation spectroscopy, and magnetic resonance microscopy are also analyzed briefly in the review. The path that physics and biology have passed for the last 55 years shows that there is no single method providing all necessary information on macromolecules and their interactions. Each method provides its view of the system in space and time. All physical methods are complementary. It is complementarity that is the fundamental idea justifying the existence in practice of all physical methods the description of which was the aim of the review.
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