English

Near-critical fluctuations and cytoskeleton-assisted phase separation lead to subdiffusion in cell membranes

Biological Physics 2011-04-29 v2 Soft Condensed Matter

Abstract

We address the relationship between membrane microheterogeneity and anomalous subdiffusion in cell membranes by carrying out Monte Carlo simulations of two-component lipid membranes. We find that near-critical fluctuations in the membrane lead to transient subdiffusion, while membrane-cytoskeleton interaction strongly affects phase separation, enhances subdiffusion, and eventually leads to hop diffusion of lipids. Thus, we present a minimum realistic model for membrane rafts showing the features of both microscopic phase separation and subdiffusion.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1010.1207,
  title  = {Near-critical fluctuations and cytoskeleton-assisted phase separation lead to subdiffusion in cell membranes},
  author = {Jens Ehrig and Eugene P. Petrov and Petra Schwille},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1010.1207},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

21 pages, 5 figures; Supporting Material 5 pages, 1 figure, 1 table