The importance of surfaces in single-molecule bioscience

The last ten years have witnessed an explosion of new techniques that can be used to probe the dynamic behavior of individual biological molecules, leading to discoveries that would not have been possible with more traditional biochemical methods. A common feature among these single-molecule approaches is the need for the biological molecules to be anchored to a solid support surface. This must be done under conditions that minimize nonspecific adsorption without compromising the biological integrity of the sample. In this review we highlight why surface attachments are a critical aspect of many single-molecule studies and we discuss current methods for anchoring biomolecules. Finally, we provide a detailed description of a new method developed by our laboratory for anchoring and organizing hundreds of individual DNA molecules on a surface, allowing “high-throughput” studies of protein–DNA interactions at the single-molecule level.