Abstract
Recent progress of the optical microscopy, especially the nearfield microscopy, has enabled us to study functions and interactions of protein molecules at single molecular level. Single molecule imaging has become an indispensable technique to life science research. On one hand, after the determination of the whole DNA sequences of human genome, the remained issues are elucidation of the functions of genes. Single-molecule imaging technique is expected to greatly contribute to such problems. Here, I review and survey the functional analysis of biomolecules by single-molecule imaging and manipulation.
