Optical investigations of the RNA polymerase molecular motor.

Molecular motors have been extensively studied over the past 25 years using a range of optical microscopy methods. The specific example of RNA polymerase, responsible for transcribing the information encoded in DNA into RNA, illustrates the strength of the convergence between these recent approaches and the vast store of data collected over the past half century using the more 'classical' approaches of genetics, biochemistry, and structure elucidation. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]