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Five challenges to bringing single-molecule force spectroscopy into living cells

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In recent years, single-molecule force spectroscopy techniques have been used to study how inter- and intramolecular interactions control the assembly and functional state of biomolecular machinery in vitro. Here we discuss the problems and challenges that need to be addressed to bring these technologies into living cells and to learn how cellular machinery is controlled in vivo.

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Figure 1: SMFS of the cell's molecular machinery.
Figure 2: Force-probing cellular interactions in vivo.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Yves F. Dufrêne is at Universite catholique de Louvain, Institute of Condensed Matter and Nanosciences, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.,

    Yves F Dufrêne

  2. Evan Evans is at Boston University, Medical Engineering and Physics, Boston Massachusetts, USA.,

    Evan Evans

  3. Andreas Engel is in the Department of Pharmacology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA and at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.,

    Andreas Engel

  4. Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering, Jonne Helenius and Daniel J. Müller are at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, Basel, Switzerland.,

    Jonne Helenius & Daniel J Müller

  5. Hermann E. Gaub is at Ludwig Maximillians University, Applied Physics, Munich, Germany.,

    Hermann E Gaub

Authors
  1. Yves F Dufrêne
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  2. Evan Evans
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  3. Andreas Engel
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  4. Jonne Helenius
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  5. Hermann E Gaub
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  6. Daniel J Müller
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Daniel J Müller.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Dufrêne, Y., Evans, E., Engel, A. et al. Five challenges to bringing single-molecule force spectroscopy into living cells. Nat Methods 8, 123–127 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth0211-123

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