The Physics of Life: one molecule at a time

TL;DR

This paper reviews the evolution of single molecule biophysics, highlighting its transition from studying isolated molecules to understanding complex biological processes within living cells using advanced physical techniques.

Contribution

It provides an overview of the development of single molecule cellular biophysics and discusses current research directions and future prospects.

Findings

Advances in physical techniques enable detailed study of biological processes in physiological contexts.

Single molecule biophysics now encompasses cellular environments, not just isolated molecules.

Emerging methods are expanding understanding of molecular mechanisms in living cells.

Abstract

The esteemed physicist Erwin Schroedinger, whose name is associated with the most notorious equation of quantum mechanics, also wrote a brief essay entitled 'What is Life?', asking: 'How can the events in space and time which take place within the spatial boundary of a living organism be accounted for by physics and chemistry?' The 60+ years following this seminal work have seen enormous developments in our understanding of biology on the molecular scale, physics playing a key role in solving many central problems through the development and application of new physical science techniques, biophysical analysis and rigorous intellectual insight. The early days of single molecule biophysics research was centred around molecular motors and biopolymers, largely divorced from a real physiological context. The new generation of single molecule bioscience investigations has much greater scope, involving robust methods for understanding molecular level details of the most fundamental biological processes in far more realistic, and technically challenging, physiological contexts, emerging into a new field of 'single molecule cellular biophysics'. Here, I outline how this new field has evolved, discuss the key active areas of current research, and speculate on where this may all lead in the near future.