Heterogeneous anomalous diffusion in view of superstatistics

TL;DR

This paper develops a generalized fractional kinetics model for virus diffusion in cell cytoplasm using superstatistics, capturing the fluctuating anomalous diffusion exponents observed experimentally.

Contribution

It introduces a superstatistics-based framework explicitly accounting for large time-scale separation in virus motion within cells.

Findings

The theory explains the fluctuating anomalous diffusion exponents.

It suggests a scaling behavior in virus motion.

Provides a generalized kinetic model for complex biological diffusion.

Abstract

It is experimentally known that virus exhibits stochastic motion in cytoplasm of a living cell in the free form as well as the form being contained in the endosome and the exponent of anomalous diffusion of the virus fluctuates depending on localized areas of the cytoplasm. Here, a theory is developed for establishing a generalized fractional kinetics for the infection pathway of the virus in the cytoplasm in view of superstatistics, which offers a general framework for describing nonequilibrium complex systems with two largely separated time scales. In the present theory, the existence of a large time-scale separation in the infection pathway is explicitly taken into account. A comment is also made on scaling nature of the motion of the virus that is suggested by the theory.