Figure 4. Ligand-dependent changes in bursting behaviour of single riboswitches.

(a) Single-molecule trajectories as in Fig. 3a but in the absence and presence of saturating preQ₁ (top and bottom, respectively). (b) Cumulative distribution plots indicating the distribution of ISIs during burst (green) and non-burst (red) periods at varying preQ₁ concentrations, where N is number of molecules included in the analysis. (c) Cumulative distribution plots of burst duration for the molecules in b as a function of preQ₁ concentration. As preQ₁ concentration increases, the average burst duration decreases.