Experimental evidence of symmetry breaking of transition-path times.
Publication Date
2019-01-04Journal Title
Nat Commun
ISSN
2041-1723
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Volume
10
Issue
1
Pages
55
Language
eng
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
Physical Medium
Electronic
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Gladrow, J., Ribezzi-Crivellari, M., Ritort, F., & Keyser, U. (2019). Experimental evidence of symmetry breaking of transition-path times.. Nat Commun, 10 (1), 55. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07873-9
Abstract
While thermal rates of state transitions in classical systems have been studied for almost a century, associated transition-path times have only recently received attention. Uphill and downhill transition paths between states at different free energies should be statistically indistinguishable. Here, we systematically investigate transition-path-time symmetry and report evidence of its breakdown on the molecular- and meso-scale out of equilibrium. In automated Brownian dynamics experiments, we establish first-passage-time symmetries of colloids driven by femtoNewton forces in holographically-created optical landscapes confined within microchannels. Conversely, we show that transitions which couple in a path-dependent manner to fluctuating forces exhibit asymmetry. We reproduce this asymmetry in folding transitions of DNA-hairpins driven out of equilibrium and suggest a topological mechanism of symmetry breakdown. Our results are relevant to measurements that capture a single coordinate in a multidimensional free energy landscape, as encountered in electrophysiology and single-molecule fluorescence experiments.
Keywords
DNA, Inverted Repeat Sequences, Kinetics, Models, Chemical, Models, Molecular, Molecular Dynamics Simulation, Protein Folding, Thermodynamics
Sponsorship
(J.G.) European Training Network (ETN) Grant No. 674979-NANOTRANS
(J.G.) Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability
(M.R.C.) European Unions Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 749944
(U.F.K.) ERC Consolidator Grant (DesignerPores 647144)
(F.R.) Spanish Research Council [FIS2016-80458-P]
(F.R.) Catalan Government [Icrea Academia prize 2013]
(F.R.) EU [Proseqo, FETOPEN, Proposal 687089]
Funder references
European Commission Horizon 2020 (H2020) Marie Sk?odowska-Curie actions (674979)
European Research Council (647144)
Embargo Lift Date
2100-01-01
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07873-9
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/288146
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