2021/07/16 by Nickolay Korabel, Daniel Han, Korabel, Nickolay +11 · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Physics and Astronomy · #Diffusion and Search Dynamics #FOS: Biological sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #Lipid Membrane Structure and Behavior #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) #Subcellular Processes (q-bio.SC) #stochastic dynamics and bifurcation
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2107.07760
openalex publication_date 2021/07/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
A major open problem in biophysics is to understand the highly heterogeneous transport of many structures inside living cells, such as endosomes. We find that mathematically it is described by spatio-temporal heterogeneous fractional Brownian motion (hFBM) which is defined as FBM with a randomly switching anomalous exponent and random generalized diffusion coefficient. Using a comprehensive local analysis of a large ensemble of experimental endosome trajectories (> 105), we show that their motion is characterized by power-law probability distributions of displacements and displacement increments, exponential probability distributions of local anomalous exponents and power-law probability distributions of local generalized diffusion coefficients of endosomes which are crucial ingredients of spatio-temporal hFBM. The increased sensitivity of deep learning neural networks for FBM characterisation corroborates the development of this multi-fractal analysis. Our findings are an important step in understanding endosome transport. We also provide a powerful tool for studying other heterogeneous cellular processes.