1. Analysis of persistence during intracellular actin-based transport mediated by molecular motors

PALLAVICINI, MARCELO DESPOSITO, VALERIA LEVI, LUCIANA BRUNO

Journal of Physics: Conference Series

IOP Publishing, Inc

Año: 2010

1742-6588

The displacement of particles or probes in the cell cytoplasm as a function of time ischaracterized by di®erent anomalous di®usion regimes. The transport of large cargoes, such asorganelles, vesicles or large proteins, involves the action of ATP-consuming molecular motors.We investigate the motion of pigment organelles driven by myosin-V motors in Xenopus laevismelanocytes using a high spatio-temporal resolution tracking technique. By analyzing theturning angles (Á) of the obtained 2D trajectories as a function of the time lag, we determine thecritical time of the transition between anticorrelated and directed motion as the time when theturning angles begin to concentrate around Á = 0. We relate this transition with the crossoverfrom subdi®usive to superdi®usive behavior observed in a previous work [5]. We also assayedthe properties of the trajectories in cells with inhibited myosin activity, and we can comparethe results in the presence and absence of active motors.