Increasing the accuracy of single-molecule data analysis using tMAVEN.

The power of time-dependent single-molecule biophysical experiments lies in their ability to uncover the molecular mechanisms governing experimental systems by computationally applying kinetic models to the data. While many software solutions have been developed to estimate the optimal parameters of such models, the results reported here show that the models themselves are often inherently mismatched with the molecular mechanisms they are being used to analyze. To investigate these mismatches and demonstrate how to best model the kinetics of a molecular mechanism, we have used time-series M odeling, A nalysis, and V isualization EN vironment (tMAVEN), an open-source software platform we have developed that, among other features, enables the analysis of single-molecule datasets using different kinetic models within a single, extensible, and customizable pipeline.