Dynamical observations of local bio-molecular sites using nanocrystals

Recently, we succeeded time-resolved x-ray observations of picometer-scale slow Brownian motions of individual protein molecules in aqueous solutions. In this work, we investigated the relationship between individual protein molecules and the labeled nanocrystals. In order to control the number of the bonding sites on the labeled gold nanocrystals, we utilized both the periodical structure in Actin filaments and using the mercury compound. As a result, we observed free Brownian Motions of the G terminal in F-actin, when single gold nanocrystal is linked to single G-actin.