Molecular Seismology: An inverse problem in nanobiology.
Boczko, Erik M.
Hinow, Peter
:
2006-09-12
Abstract
The density profile of an elastic fiber like DNA will change in space and time as
ligands associate with it. This observation affords a new direction in single molecule
studies provided that density profiles can be measured in space and time. In fact, this
is precisely the objective of seismology, where the mathematics of inverse problems
have been employed with success. We argue that inverse problems in elastic media
can be directly applied to biophysical problems of fiber-ligand association, and demonstrate that
robust algorithms exist to perform density reconstruction in the condensed phase.