Fig. 1: Principle and performance of dynamic mass photometry.
a, Schematic diagram of dynamic mass photometry of protein complexes diffusing on an SLB. The images were acquired at 331 Hz and processed with a sliding median filter, which showed individual protein complexes on the bilayer as diffraction-limited spots. This procedure consistently gave similar results (n > 30). b, Histogram of mean trajectory contrasts detected in a dynamic mass photometry movie (n = 1 movie, 4 min) of WT diffusing on an SLB (considering only trajectories of at least 151 ms in length; n = 425 trajectories). c, Contrast–mass calibration curve of the dynamic mass photometry measurement shown in b (n = 1 dynamic mass photometry movie, 4 min) yielding a contrast to mass ratio of 4.40 % MDa−1. Error bars represent the mean contrast ± s.e.m. of each oligomeric species (ndimer = 34, ntetramer = 85, nhexamer = 184, noctamer = 23 trajectories). d, 2D localization error of our PSF-fitting procedure of WT dimers, tetramers, hexamers and octamers plotted as a function of effective exposure time. Data are given as the mean localization errors in 2D ± the combined s.d. of the mean errors in x and y of particle trajectories detected during the dynamic mass photometry movie in b (n = 1 movie, 4 min), processed with different amounts of frame averaging (ndimer = 34, 51, 60, 52, 73; ntetramer = 82, 102, 98, 97, 94; nhexamer = 177, 229, 224, 208, 173; noctamer = 22, 29, 37, 38, 33 trajectories for total exposure times of 3.0, 6.0, 9.1, 12.1 and 15.1 ms, respectively). e, Mass trace and histogram of a WT decamer trajectory (n = 6,061 frames). f, Corresponding particle trajectory. g, Corresponding cumulative probability of particle displacements during 1 frame (t = 3 ms) and the fits to a two-component model (equation 4). Scale bars, 500 nm.
