A silicon qubit platform for in situ single molecule structure determination

TL;DR

This paper proposes a silicon-based quantum platform for in situ single-molecule imaging, enabling atomic-level structural determination of individual proteins in native environments, with potential impacts on biology and medicine.

Contribution

It introduces a novel silicon qubit platform for high-resolution, in situ single-molecule imaging, leveraging quantum coherence for detailed structural insights.

Findings

Simulation shows scalable atomic-level structure determination

Platform is well-suited for lipid-membrane environments

Potential to impact membrane biology and drug development

Abstract

Imaging individual conformational instances of generic, inhomogeneous, transient or intrinsically disordered protein systems at the single molecule level in situ is one of the notable challenges in structural biology. Present techniques access averaged structural information by measuring over large ensembles of proteins in nearly uniform conformational states in synthetic environments. This poses significant implications for diagnostics and drug design which require a detailed understanding of subtle conformational changes, small molecule interactions and ligand dynamics. Here we tackle the problem by designing a single molecule imaging platform technology embracing the advantages silicon-based spin qubits offer in terms of quantum coherence and established fabrication pathways. We demonstrate through detailed simulation, that this platform enables scalable atomic-level structure-determination of individual molecular systems in native environments. The approach is particularly well suited to the high-value lipid-membrane context, and as such its experimental implementation could have far-reaching consequences for the understanding of membrane biology and drug development.