English

Superstatistical modelling of protein diffusion dynamics in bacteria

Statistical Mechanics 2021-03-09 v2 Biological Physics

Abstract

A recent experiment [Sadoon AA, Wang Y. 2018 Phys. Rev. E 98, 042411] has revealed that nucleoid associated proteins (i.e., DNA-binding proteins) exhibit highly heterogeneous diffusion processes in bacteria where not only the diffusion constant but also the anomalous diffusion exponent fluctuates for the various proteins. The distribution of displacements of such proteins is observed to take a q-Gaussian form, which decays as a power law. Here, a statistical model is developed for the diffusive motion of the proteins within the bacterium, based on a superstatistics with two variables. This model hierarchically takes into account the joint fluctuations of both the anomalous diffusion exponents and the diffusion constants. A fractional Brownian motion is discussed as a possible local model. Good agreement with the experimental data is obtained.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2010.13865,
  title  = {Superstatistical modelling of protein diffusion dynamics in bacteria},
  author = {Yuichi Itto and Christian Beck},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.13865},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

48 pages, 4 figures. The discussion has been developed further and some additional references were added. Published version

R2 v1 2026-06-23T19:39:59.297Z