Single-molecule time resolution in dilute liquids and live cells at the molecular scale: Constraints on the measurement time

Abstract

The research article is in continuation of previous theoretical work of the author and extends this theory by defining limits in measurement times that should not be exceeded when one wants to follow the selfsame molecule with high probability. The method and result parts are mainly focused on exactly this new aspect and are concise and comprehensible by providing the necessary basis for the practical results. Although photon statistics is said to be due to the photon counting experiments in spectroscopy, microscopy, and super-resolution microscopy (nanoscopy), our approach views these properties of excited molecules/particles as secondary. Emitted photons are epiphenomenal of the underlying process of thermodynamic jitter of molecules/particles. Theoretical and empirical considerations have to take into account the molecular motion as the thermodynamic basis of the molecule number fluctuations and the measurement signal, respectively. And that is the single-molecule/single-particle time resolution of translational diffusion at the molecular scale and their limits. The research article provides some practical and novel findings. Single-molecule technologies have rapidly advanced. The use of single-molecule technologies promises to generate new insights about the differences in function between individual molecules, make the data generated most useful to the biomedical fields, including translational medicine (Am J Transl Med 2021. 5 (3):154-165).