Click here to close Hello! We notice that you are using Internet Explorer, which is not supported by Xenbase and may cause the site to display incorrectly. We suggest using a current version of Chrome, FireFox, or Safari.
XB-ART-58322
Entropy (Basel) 2021 Jul 13;237:. doi: 10.3390/e23070892.
Show Gene links Show Anatomy links

Single-Particle Tracking Reveals Anti-Persistent Subdiffusion in Cell Extracts.

Speckner K , Weiss M .


???displayArticle.abstract???
Single-particle tracking (SPT) has become a powerful tool to quantify transport phenomena in complex media with unprecedented detail. Based on the reconstruction of individual trajectories, a wealth of informative measures become available for each particle, allowing for a detailed comparison with theoretical predictions. While SPT has been used frequently to explore diffusive transport in artificial fluids and inside living cells, intermediate systems, i.e., biochemically active cell extracts, have been studied only sparsely. Extracts derived from the eggs of the clawfrog Xenopus laevis, for example, are known for their ability to support and mimic vital processes of cells, emphasizing the need to explore also the transport phenomena of nano-sized particles in such extracts. Here, we have performed extensive SPT on beads with 20 nm radius in native and chemically treated Xenopus extracts. By analyzing a variety of distinct measures, we show that these beads feature an anti-persistent subdiffusion that is consistent with fractional Brownian motion. Chemical treatments did not grossly alter this finding, suggesting that the high degree of macromolecular crowding in Xenopus extracts equips the fluid with a viscoelastic modulus, hence enforcing particles to perform random walks with a significant anti-persistent memory kernel.

???displayArticle.pubmedLink??? 34356433
???displayArticle.link??? Entropy (Basel)
???displayArticle.grants??? [+]

Species referenced: Xenopus laevis
Genes referenced: agxt

References [+] :
Akin, Single-Molecule Imaging of Nav1.6 on the Surface of Hippocampal Neurons Reveals Somatic Nanoclusters. 2016, Pubmed