Lighting Up Single-Molecule Biosensors and Bioimaging: Now and the Decade to Come

Dear Colleagues,

Single-molecule biosensing and bioimaging approaches have pushed beyond the ensemble average and revealed the statistical qualities of molecular properties and activites, thus allowing for an understanding of the biological processes at a high level of detail. Single-molecular biosensing methods, such as nanopore sensors, have developed the capability to recognize the sequences of DNA, RNA, and protein molecules, providing new tools to understand their molecular microstructures. Single-molecule bioimaging approaches, such as the widely used fluorescence microscopy, have provided high throughput when simultaneously determining the properties of multiple molecules for statistical analysis, and have demonstrated the capability to track the movements of single molecules in order to understand the effects of molecular motions on biological activities. In recent years, label-free single-molecule imaging approaches have further expanded the applications of single-molecule detection methods. These approaches can determine intrinsic molecular properties such as mass and molecular binding kinetics without the interference of labels, thus providing us with a thorough understanding of molecular properties and enabling single-molecule analysis under conditions which are otherwise challenging for the labeling of target molecules. Nonetheless, the demand for building new single-molecule biosensing and bioimaging schemes that are cost effective, user friendly, highly repeatable, and more sensitive than current approaches is ever increasing. In addition, the existing gaps between single-molecule detection approaches and practical applications urgently need to be bridged, because it remains unclear whether the heterogeneity of the microscopic molecular properties has substantial impact on the biological behaviors of living organisms. In this Special Issue, we focus on newfound developments and the outlook of highly sensitive biosensing and imaging approaches that already or may soon acquire single-molecule detection capabilities, along with their applications in multilevel analyses of molecular interactions for understanding the relationship between microscopic molecular properties and biological behaviors, such as cell activities or disease symptoms. We invite research submissions capable of helping in advancing the field of single-molecule biosensing and bioimaging, and their applications for the efficient analysis of biological activities.

Dr. Pengfei Zhang
Dr. Yi Chen
Guest Editors

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• single molecules
• biosensing
• bioimaging
• molecular interaction and recognition
• biological behaviors