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High-speed atomic force microscopy and its future prospects

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Abstract

Various techniques have been developed and used to investigate how proteins produce complex biological architectures and phenomena. Among these techniques, high-speed atomic force microscopy (HS-AFM) holds a unique position. It is only HS-AFM that allows the simultaneous assessment of structure and dynamics of single protein molecules in action. This new microscopy tool has been successfully applied to a variety of proteins, from motor proteins to membrane proteins, antibodies, enzymes, and even to intrinsically disordered proteins. And yet there still remain many biomolecular phenomena that cannot be addressed by HS-AFM in its current form. Here, I present a brief history of HS-AFM development, describe the current state of HS-AFM, and then discuss which new biological scanning probe microscopy techniques will be coming up next.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by JST/CREST (#JPMJCR13M1) and KAKENHI from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan (#21113002, #24227005 and #26119003).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nano-Life Science Institute, Kanazawa University, Kakuma-machi, Kanazawa, 920-1192, Japan

    Toshio Ando

  2. Core Research for Evolutionary Science and Technology (CREST), Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), Tokyo, 102-0075, Japan

    Toshio Ando

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  1. Toshio Ando
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Correspondence to Toshio Ando.

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Toshio Ando declares that he has no conflicts of interest.

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This article is part of a Special Issue on ‘Biomolecules to Bio-nanomachines—Fumio Arisaka 70th Birthday’ edited by Damien Hall, Junichi Takagi and Haruki Nakamura.

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Ando, T. High-speed atomic force microscopy and its future prospects. Biophys Rev 10, 285–292 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12551-017-0356-5

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