Finite-size effects in intracellular microrheology

TL;DR

This paper presents a model explaining finite-size effects in intracellular microrheology, linking particle dynamics to cytoskeleton interactions and reproducing experimental power-law behaviors.

Contribution

It introduces a diffusion-based model incorporating particle-cytoskeleton interactions to explain size-dependent microrheology effects.

Findings

Model reproduces observed power-law mean-square displacement behavior.

Exponent depends on particle-to-cytoskeleton size ratio.

Provides insight into intracellular particle dynamics.

Abstract

We propose a model to explain finite-size effects in intracellular microrheology observed in experiments. The constrained dynamics of the particles in the intracellular medium, treated as a viscoelastic medium, is described by means of a diffusion equation in which interactions of the particles with the cytoskeleton are modelled by a harmonic force. The model reproduces the observed power-law behavior of the mean-square displacement in which the exponent depends on the ratio between particle-to-cytoskeleton-network sizes.