The Plasma Membrane is Compartmentalized by a Self-Similar Cortical Actin Meshwork

Abstract

A broad range of membrane proteins display anomalous diffusion on the cell surface. Different methods provide evidence for obstructed subdiffusion and diffusion on a fractal space, but the underlying structure inducing anomalous diffusion has never been visualized due to experimental challenges. We addressed this problem by imaging the cortical actin at high resolution while simultaneously tracking individual membrane proteins in live mammalian cells. Our data confirm that actin introduces barriers leading to compartmentalization of the plasma membrane and that membrane proteins are transiently confined within actin fences. Furthermore, superresolution imaging shows that the cortical actin is organized into a self-similar meshwork. These results present a hierarchical nanoscale picture of the plasma membrane.

References in corpus (2)

• Anomalous transport in the crowded world of biological cells
• Weak ergodicity breaking of receptor motion in living cells stemming from random diffusivity

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Spectral content of a single non-Brownian trajectory
• Elucidating distinct ion channel populations on the surface of hippocampal neurons via single-particle tracking recurrence analysis
• Effects of soft interactions and bound mobility on diffusion in crowded environments: a model of sticky and slippery obstacles
• Transient subdiffusion from an Ising environment