Heterogeneous anomalous diffusion of virus in cytoplasm of a living cell

TL;DR

This paper models the heterogeneous anomalous diffusion of viruses in living cell cytoplasm using generalized fractional kinetic theory, providing a statistical framework for local diffusion exponent fluctuations that can be experimentally tested.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical model describing local fluctuations in anomalous diffusion exponents within cytoplasm, extending fractional kinetic theory to heterogeneous environments.

Findings

The model predicts fluctuating diffusion exponents in cytoplasm.

It offers a statistical description of local anomalous diffusion behavior.

The theory can be validated through experimental heterogeneous diffusion studies.

Abstract

The infection pathway of virus in cytoplasm of a living cell is studied from the viewpoint of diffusion theory. The cytoplasm plays a role of a medium for stochastic motion of the virus contained in the endosome as well as the free virus. It is experimentally known that the exponent of anomalous diffusion fluctuates in localized areas of the cytoplasm. Here, generalizing fractional kinetic theory, such fluctuations are described in terms of the exponent locally distributed over the cytoplasm, and a theoretical proposition is presented for its statistical form. The proposed fluctuations may be examined in an experiment of heterogeneous diffusion in the infection pathway.