Deciphering the structure and interactions of individual biomolecules in their native cellular environment is one of the elementary problems in biology. Recent single- molecule techniques have attempted to bridge the gap between the information traditionally obtained on the ensemble level where multiple copies of the same molecule operate asynchronously, and the single-molecule limit. However, the inherent complexity of most of the cell functions, which involves multiple reaction pathways, presents an enormous experimental challenge for single-molecule observations because the measurements are inherently noisier.

To circumvent these complications, we choose to work with model systems. Much as theoretical physicists seek to describe a phenomenon by a physical model that captures the essential ingredients of the problem, we investigate a simplified, in vitro experimental system, which preserve the richness of the biological process that inspires our research. This approach provides us with the opportunity to perform clean measurements, and explore our systems under conditions that are otherwise hard to attain. For example, we can drive our molecules out of thermal equilibrium and monitor their reaction kinetics. We believe that this approach will give us a better physical insight into the biological processes and reveal their underlying laws.

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