Authors
Avi Caspi, Rony Granek, Michael Elbaum
Publication date
2002/7/29
Journal
Physical Review E
Volume
66
Issue
1
Pages
011916
Publisher
American Physical Society
Description
We study the motion of a probe driven by microtubule-associated motors within a living eukaryotic cell. The measured mean square displacement,< x (t) 2> of engulfed 2 and 3 μ m diameter microspheres shows enhanced diffusion scaling as t 3/2 at short times, with a clear crossover to ordinary or subdiffusive scaling, ie, t γ with γ less than or equal to 1, at long times. Using optical tweezers we tried to move the engulfed bead within the cell in order to relate the anomalous diffusion scaling to the density of the network in which the bead is embedded. Results show that the larger beads, 2 and 3 μ m diameter, must actively push the cytoskeleton filaments out of the way in order to move, whereas smaller beads of 1 μ m diameter can be “rattled” within a cage. The 1 μ m beads also perform an enhanced diffusion but with a smaller and less consistent exponent 1.2< γ< 1.45. We interpret the half-integer power observed with …
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