Figure 2. Intranuclear SMT to quantify search times.

(A) in SMT the diffraction limited spots corresponding to individual TF molecules in the nucleus are tracked over time. (B) The single-molecule tracks, that typically last for few frames are segmented into ‘bound’ and ‘free’ molecules and analyzed in terms of the distribution of residence times and fraction of segments belonging to each state. These parameters are then combined to estimate the ‘pseudo-search time $\tau {\ast }_{search}$, that is the time a TF molecule spends on average between two consecutive binding events (at any site).