Fig. 1: This blind study reports on the performance of diverse analysis tools to describe single-molecule dynamics with quantitative kinetic rate constants.

Biomolecular dynamics of proteins and nucleic acids can be detected by smFRET and other single-molecule techniques. Extracting testable kinetic rate models from the experimental time traces is complicated by experimental shortcomings. Multiple labs joined forces to directly test the performance of diverse analytical approaches to infer kinetic rate constants in a blind study.