Virtual Issue on Fast Dynamics and Function of Biomolecules

Cellular functions are governed by a myriad of processes that typically occur through multiple steps, spanning an astonishingly wide time-window from femtoseconds to seconds. This complexity is a reflection of the highly complex structural properties of biomolecules. Despite a great deal of knowledge about these properties being available nowadays, through both experiments (X-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and cryo-electron microscopy) and deep-learning algorithms (e.g., AlphaFold2, RoseTTAFold in the case of proteins), much less is understood about the dynamic behavior of biomolecules. Particularly, it is becoming increasingly clear that many cellular functions, including those that appear to occur at slower characteristic times, rely on ultrafast and fast processes that happen at the molecular scale within the femtosecond to nanosecond time-window. The question of whether and how ultrafast and fast dynamics are directly related to key biological processes has been the focus of a number of papers published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters over the past two years (2021–2022).