Abstract. We present a systematic method of analysis of experiments performed with single motor proteins. The use of such a method should allow a more detailed description of the motor's chemical cycle through the precise fitting of the experimental data. We model the dynamics of a processive or rotary molecular motor using a renewal process, in line with the work initiated by Svoboda, Mitra and Block. We apply a functional technique to compute different types of multiple-time correlation function of the renewal process, which have applications to bead-assay experiments performed both with processive molecular motors, such as myosin V and kinesin, and rotary motors, such as F1-ATPase.

Received 29 May 2005, accepted for publication 21 September 2005
Published 13 October 2005