The explosive growth of single-molecule detection, manipulation and analytical techniques is revolutionizing our understanding of the basic processes leading to neurodegenerative disease. Key biological and chemical processes can now be probed with new levels of detail, one molecule at a time, from the complex interplay between biomolecules on the nanoscale to an ever expanding range of applications across multiple length and time scales. Their common feature is the ability to overcome ensemble averaging to reveal new molecular-level insights into populations containing structural, spatial and temporal heterogeneity. As a result, single-molecule techniques are not only unravelling nanoscale structures and dynamics, but also facilitating molecular tracking, stoichiometry and sub-population analysis, environmental sensing, and the detection of ultrafast processes with exquisite precision. Transformative insights into the structure, function and dynamics of single molecules implicated in neurodegenerative diseases have been driven by technological advances, and the arsenal of single-molecule techniques available provides a quantitative framework for accessing otherwise hidden biomolecular properties. Investigation of these complex systems on a molecule-by-molecule basis can provide remarkable and often surprising insights into their mode of action, interactions and mechanisms.
This Research Topic aims to provide a platform for researchers to share promising and novel developments, implementations and perspectives related to the observation, characterization, manipulation and analysis of single biomolecules implicated in neurodegenerative diseases, and to showcase how single-molecule approaches are enabling the mechanisms underlying neurodegeneration to be unraveled. This Topic will also include reviews, and articles reporting on the development of novel methods and/or significant advances in the present techniques to probe the building blocks of neurodegeneration. We especially emphasize single-molecule studies of biomarkers, biomolecular aggregation systems, liquid phase separation processes, protein-membrane and protein-protein interactions, systems in living cells, and future perspectives. We wish to showcase how single-molecule technologies and their diverse applications can address key biological and biomedical questions related to neurodegenerative disease.
The aim of this Research Topic is to showcase promising, recent, novel and original research, as well as reviews and future perspectives in the single-molecule field. Areas to be covered in this Research Topic may include, but are not limited to:
• The application of single-molecule techniques for the characterization of biomolecular mechanisms underpinning neurodegenerative disease. Techniques may include super-resolution microscopy, FRET, particle tracking, fluorescence correlation spectroscopy, molecular dynamics simulations, atomic force microscopy, electron microscopy, force manipulation methods, and nanopores among others.
• Novel development of single-molecule techniques and/or significant advancement of existing methods in terms of instrumentation, sensor/probe development, cross-modality approaches, assay development, and analytical tools, with clear benefits towards the observation and/or manipulation of single molecules implicated in neurodegenerative disease.
The explosive growth of single-molecule detection, manipulation and analytical techniques is revolutionizing our understanding of the basic processes leading to neurodegenerative disease. Key biological and chemical processes can now be probed with new levels of detail, one molecule at a time, from the complex interplay between biomolecules on the nanoscale to an ever expanding range of applications across multiple length and time scales. Their common feature is the ability to overcome ensemble averaging to reveal new molecular-level insights into populations containing structural, spatial and temporal heterogeneity. As a result, single-molecule techniques are not only unravelling nanoscale structures and dynamics, but also facilitating molecular tracking, stoichiometry and sub-population analysis, environmental sensing, and the detection of ultrafast processes with exquisite precision. Transformative insights into the structure, function and dynamics of single molecules implicated in neurodegenerative diseases have been driven by technological advances, and the arsenal of single-molecule techniques available provides a quantitative framework for accessing otherwise hidden biomolecular properties. Investigation of these complex systems on a molecule-by-molecule basis can provide remarkable and often surprising insights into their mode of action, interactions and mechanisms.
This Research Topic aims to provide a platform for researchers to share promising and novel developments, implementations and perspectives related to the observation, characterization, manipulation and analysis of single biomolecules implicated in neurodegenerative diseases, and to showcase how single-molecule approaches are enabling the mechanisms underlying neurodegeneration to be unraveled. This Topic will also include reviews, and articles reporting on the development of novel methods and/or significant advances in the present techniques to probe the building blocks of neurodegeneration. We especially emphasize single-molecule studies of biomarkers, biomolecular aggregation systems, liquid phase separation processes, protein-membrane and protein-protein interactions, systems in living cells, and future perspectives. We wish to showcase how single-molecule technologies and their diverse applications can address key biological and biomedical questions related to neurodegenerative disease.
The aim of this Research Topic is to showcase promising, recent, novel and original research, as well as reviews and future perspectives in the single-molecule field. Areas to be covered in this Research Topic may include, but are not limited to:
• The application of single-molecule techniques for the characterization of biomolecular mechanisms underpinning neurodegenerative disease. Techniques may include super-resolution microscopy, FRET, particle tracking, fluorescence correlation spectroscopy, molecular dynamics simulations, atomic force microscopy, electron microscopy, force manipulation methods, and nanopores among others.
• Novel development of single-molecule techniques and/or significant advancement of existing methods in terms of instrumentation, sensor/probe development, cross-modality approaches, assay development, and analytical tools, with clear benefits towards the observation and/or manipulation of single molecules implicated in neurodegenerative disease.
