AI Article Synopsis
- Nanopores are introduced as a new method for measuring free energies that indicate the stability of folded molecules like DNA hairpins.
- By pulling molecules through nanopores and using techniques like the Jarzynski fluctuation theorem, researchers can estimate free energy changes in different pulling conditions.
- The study shows that equilibrium sampling is crucial for consistent free energy estimates between nanopore and optical tweezer methods, highlighting the practical applications of nanopores in molecular science.
Article Abstract
Free energies (FEs) in molecular sciences can be used to quantify the stability of folded molecules. In this article, we introduce nanopores for measuring FEs. We pull DNA hairpin-forming molecules through a nanopore, measure work, and estimate the FE change in the slow limit, and with the Jarzynski fluctuation theorem (FT) at fast pulling times. We also pull our molecule with optical tweezers, compare it to nanopores, and explore how sampling single molecules from equilibrium or a folded ensemble affects the FE estimate via the FT. The nanopore experiment helps us address and overcome the conceptual problem of equilibrium sampling in single-molecule pulling experiments. Only when molecules are sampled from an equilibrium ensemble do nanopore and tweezer FE estimates mutually agree. We demonstrate that nanopores are very useful tools for comparing FEs of two molecules at finite times and we propose future applications.
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| http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.109.024404 | DOI Listing |
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