Different anomalous diffusion regimes measured in the dynamics of tracer particles in actin networks

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Levin, Maayan, Bel, Golan, Roichman, Yael
Format: Preprint
Published: 2020
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866929389520814080
author Levin, Maayan
Bel, Golan
Roichman, Yael
author_facet Levin, Maayan
Bel, Golan
Roichman, Yael
contents It was previously believed that diffusion of a tracer particle in a viscoelastic material should be of the fractional Brownian motion (fBm) type. This is due to the long-term memory in the response of such materials to mechanical perturbations. Surprisingly, the diffusion of a tracer particle in a network of a purified protein, actin, was found to conform to the continuous time random walk (CTRW) type in one study that focused on the ensemble average characteristics. Here, we analyze the dynamics of two differently sized tracer particles in actin networks of different mesh sizes. We find that the ratio of tracer particle size to the characteristic length scale of a bio-polymer network plays a crucial role in determining the type of diffusion the particle performs. We find that the tracer particle diffusion has features of fBm when the particle is large compared to the mesh size, of normal diffusion when the particle is much smaller than the mesh size, and of CTRW in between these two limits. Based on our findings, we propose and verify numerically a new model for the tracer particle's motion in all regimes. Our model suggests that diffusion in actin networks consists of fBm of the tracer particle coupled with occasional caging events with power-law-distributed escape times.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2011_00539
institution arXiv
publishDate 2020
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Different anomalous diffusion regimes measured in the dynamics of tracer particles in actin networks
Levin, Maayan
Bel, Golan
Roichman, Yael
Soft Condensed Matter
Statistical Mechanics
It was previously believed that diffusion of a tracer particle in a viscoelastic material should be of the fractional Brownian motion (fBm) type. This is due to the long-term memory in the response of such materials to mechanical perturbations. Surprisingly, the diffusion of a tracer particle in a network of a purified protein, actin, was found to conform to the continuous time random walk (CTRW) type in one study that focused on the ensemble average characteristics. Here, we analyze the dynamics of two differently sized tracer particles in actin networks of different mesh sizes. We find that the ratio of tracer particle size to the characteristic length scale of a bio-polymer network plays a crucial role in determining the type of diffusion the particle performs. We find that the tracer particle diffusion has features of fBm when the particle is large compared to the mesh size, of normal diffusion when the particle is much smaller than the mesh size, and of CTRW in between these two limits. Based on our findings, we propose and verify numerically a new model for the tracer particle's motion in all regimes. Our model suggests that diffusion in actin networks consists of fBm of the tracer particle coupled with occasional caging events with power-law-distributed escape times.
title Different anomalous diffusion regimes measured in the dynamics of tracer particles in actin networks
topic Soft Condensed Matter
Statistical Mechanics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.00539