Shih‐Chu Liao, Beniamino Barbieri, Gerd Baumann, Zeno Földes-Papp
This article addresses a current point of contention in the field of single-molecule/single-particle tracking, as well as the relevant literature, and supplements it with some published cell-based experiments to illustrate our conclusions and known theorems. We attempt to explain the controversy surrounding the differing biophysical and cell biological results of studies on the individual molecule and those “at the single-molecule level” as well as at the level of many molecules in such a way that even readers who are unfamiliar with the subject can understand it without having to read all the mathematical, physical, and biophysical references. Given this abundance of studies in the literature, it is obvious that genuine single-molecule studies are urgently needed, i.e., single-molecule studies that focus on increasing the sensitivity of the temporal resolution of single-molecule measurements and not just on spatial resolution.