Passive microrheology of solvent-induced fibrillar protein networks

Particle tracking microrheology (PTM) has been used to study the sol-gel transition in solvent-induced fibrillar beta-lactoglobulin gels at room temperature and pH 7. The passive nature of microrheology allowed measurements to be made around and below the critical gelation concentration. The method of superposition introduced by Larsen and Furst (Larsen, T. H.; Furst, E. M. Phys. Rev. Lett. 2008, 100, 146001) was applied to the one-particle mean square displacement (MSD), yielding a critical relaxation exponent of n = 0.58 at concentrations close to the measured critical concentration of 4% (w/v). At a higher concentration of 12% (w/v), n was observed to decrease. The pregel and gel master curves were used to find the viscoelastic moduli over 8 decades of frequency. Combined with the measured shift factors, this allowed cure curves at 1 Hz to be constructed for direct comparison with results from bulk rheology. Time-independent modulus superposition was found for all concentrations. Good agreement for concentration scaling was found between the traditional methods for characterizing gels and the recently described microrheological determination of the gel time and critical behavior.