Since the 1990s, developments in room-temperature single-molecule spectroscopy, imaging, and manipulation have allowed studies of single-molecule behaviors in vitro and in living cells. Unlike conventional ensemble studies, single molecule biophysical chemistry is characterized by ubiquitous fluctuations of a molecular property or copy number in a system containing one molecule of a particular chemical species. The understanding of many life processes that are experimentally accessible by the new technologies requires thermodynamics, equilibrium and nonequilibrium statistical mechanics, and chemical kinetics to be applied and recast for such systems.<br/><br/>Applications of the single molecule technologies to biology and medicine have become a major force in the life sciences. DNA exists as single molecules that carry genetic codes in individual cells. For this reason, gene expression is stochastic. Single-molecule gene expression experiments in live single cells allowed quantitative description and mechanistic interpretations. The fact that there are 46 different individual DNA molecules (chromosomes) in a human cell dictates that genomic variation occurs stochastically and cannot be synchronized among individual cells. To probe such genomic variations necessitates single-cell single-molecule measurements, which have been made possible recently, opening opportunities to investigate and diagnose cancers and to avoid genetic disorders in newborns.

<b>Award Address </b>(Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry sponsored by E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.). Single molecule biophysical chemistry: Life at the single molecule level

249th National Meeting (2015)

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Award Address (Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry sponsored by E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.). Single molecule biophysical chemistry: Life at the single molecule level