Probing structural heterogeneities and conformational fluctuations of biopolymers

We study protein and nucleic acid structure and dynamics using single-molecule fluorescence resonance energy transfer measurements with alternating-laser excitation. Freely diffusing molecules are sorted into subpopulations based on stoichiometry, detecting donor and acceptor coincidence for periods over 100 (micro)s-1 ms. Faster (< 100 (micro)s) fluctuating distance distributions are studied within these subpopulations using time-resolved single photon counting measurements. We find that short double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) is more flexible than expected from persistence lengths measured on long dsDNA. We find that the electrostatic portion of the persistence length of single-stranded poly-dT varies as the ionic strength (I) to the -1/2 power (I-1/2). Lastly, we find that the unfolded protein Chymotrypsin Inhibitor 2 (CI2) is unstructured at high denaturant. However, in the presence of folded CI2 (at lower denaturant), unfolded CI2 is more compact and displays larger distance fluctuations, possibly due to unsuccessful attempts to cross the folding barrier