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The work of Takuma Akimoto, Eiji Yamamoto and Kenji Yasuoka at Keio
University in Yasuoka group of Yamamoto team and colleagues has been published in Physical Review Letters.
[Researcher］
Takuma Akimoto(Keio University),
Eiji Yamamoto (Keio University),
Kenji Yasuoka(Keio University)
[Publication Date]
Oct. 20, 2011
[Journal Title]
Physical Review Letters
[Contents］
Anomalous diffusion is a ubiquitous phenomenon in overcrowded fluids because molecular crowding
gives rise to trappings of molecules like restricted motions of passengers in an overcrowded train.
In particular, the mean square displacement, which characterizes fluidity, does not grow linearly
with time but grows sublinearly (subdiffusion). Mechanisms generating subdiffusion are a power-law
trapping, an anticorrelation (viscoelasticity), and a fractal geometry.
In overcrowded fluids such as living cells, viscoelasticity is considered as a mechanism of subdiffusion.
For the first time, Takuma Akimoto, a physicist at Keio Univeristy in Japan, and his colleagues have found
that a lipid bilayer has not only a viscoelastic property but also a power-law trapping-time distribution
by analyzing fluctuations of the time-averaged mean square displacement obtained by single trajectories
in molecular dynamics simulations.
The results play an important role to elucidate subdiffusion of macro molecules in living cells.
URL : http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v107/i17/e178103
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