Counting statistics of single molecule reaction events and reaction dynamics of a single molecule

Abstract

We present an exact form for counting statistics of single-molecule (SM) reaction events for a molecule with arbitrary hidden dynamical processes coupled to the reaction, examples of which can be found in many single biopolymer experiments. The result suggests a novel SM experimental observable, Theta, which can serve as a sensitive measure of the slow dynamical processes coupled to the SM reaction. For a model biopolymer reaction coupled to a slow Gaussian process, we show that Theta is more directly related to the dynamics of those hidden processes than other more commonly used measures. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.