Perspectives for variable-temperature investigations of single-protein dynamics

The conformational dynamics of proteins, a key issue in molecular biology, are characterized by the existence of a complex energy landscape, leading to a potentially huge number of possible folding routes for a given protein. This presents the experimenter with the challenge of following simultaneous rapid transitions between many different conformational states. Fluorescent labeling allows one to conduct optical experiments on individual protein molecules which naturally avoids the difficulties associated with unsynchronized ensembles. However, single-molecule experiments on biomolecules at room temperature only give access to their dynamics on a limited timescale