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Related Concept Videos

Protein Diffusion in the Membrane01:24

Protein Diffusion in the Membrane

Proteins show rotational as well as lateral diffusion across the membrane. The lateral diffusion of proteins was confirmed through the cell fusion experiment where mouse and human cells were fused, resulting in hybrid cells. When the human and mouse cells fused, the specific membrane proteins on human and mouse cells were marked with the red and green-fluorescent markers, respectively. Initially, the red and green fluorescence was located on the respective hemisphere of the cell. As time...
Diffusion01:12

Diffusion

Diffusion is the passive movement of substances down their concentration gradients—requiring no expenditure of cellular energy. Substances, such as molecules or ions, diffuse from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration in the cytosol or across membranes. Eventually, the concentration will even out, with the substance moving randomly but causing no net change in concentration. Such a state is called dynamic equilibrium, which is essential for maintaining overall...
Diffusion01:21

Diffusion

Diffusion is a type of passive transport. In passive transport, a substance tends to move from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration until the concentration is equal across the space. For example, take the diffusion of substances through the air. When someone opens a perfume bottle in a room filled with people, the perfume is at its highest concentration in the bottle and is at its lowest at the edges of the room. The perfume vapor will diffuse, or spread away, from the...
Facilitated Diffusion01:16

Facilitated Diffusion

The plasma membrane, a critical structure in cellular biology, houses an array of transporters, or carrier proteins, interspersed within its lipid bilayer. These proteins play a crucial role in solute transport through facilitated diffusion, a form of passive diffusion that uses transporters to move the molecules across the membrane.
In this process, substrates such as organic compounds and ions interact with a transporter on one side, triggering conformational changes in proteins that enable...
Cellular Membranes and Drug Transport01:24

Cellular Membranes and Drug Transport

Drugs must traverse multiple biological barriers, such as multi-layered skin, single-layered intestinal epithelium, and the plasma membrane, to reach their target sites within the body. The plasma membrane, a highly structured composite of phospholipids, carbohydrates, and proteins, is the cell's protective boundary, facilitating selective substance exchange.
Phospholipids arrange themselves into a bilayer, with hydrophilic heads oriented outward and hydrophobic tails facing inward.
Overview of Protein Sorting and Transport01:45

Overview of Protein Sorting and Transport

Eukaryotic cells have different membrane-bound organelles with distinct protein requirements. The process by which proteins are targeted to a specific organelle is called protein sorting.
Protein sorting can be of two types: signal-based sorting and vesicle-based trafficking. In signal-based sorting, specific amino acid sequences called sorting signals target proteins to the proper location inside the cell either via gated transport or by protein translocation.  In gated transport, folded...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 29, 2026

Single-Molecule Tracking Microscopy - A Tool for Determining the Diffusive States of Cytosolic Molecules
10:20

Single-Molecule Tracking Microscopy - A Tool for Determining the Diffusive States of Cytosolic Molecules

Published on: September 5, 2019

Protein diffusion in mammalian cell cytoplasm.

Thomas Kühn1, Teemu O Ihalainen, Jari Hyväluoma

  • 1NanoScience Center, Department of Physics, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland. thomas.h.kuehn@jyu.fi

Plos One
|September 3, 2011
PubMed
Summary

We developed a new mesoscopic model for protein diffusion in cells using 3D microscopy data. This method accurately quantizes protein movement, revealing differences between cellular compartments and aligning with fluorescence correlation spectroscopy results.

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From Fast Fluorescence Imaging to Molecular Diffusion Law on Live Cell Membranes in a Commercial Microscope
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Last Updated: May 29, 2026

Single-Molecule Tracking Microscopy - A Tool for Determining the Diffusive States of Cytosolic Molecules
10:20

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Published on: September 5, 2019

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Single-Molecule Diffusion and Assembly on Polymer-Crowded Lipid Membranes

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From Fast Fluorescence Imaging to Molecular Diffusion Law on Live Cell Membranes in a Commercial Microscope
15:10

From Fast Fluorescence Imaging to Molecular Diffusion Law on Live Cell Membranes in a Commercial Microscope

Published on: October 9, 2014

Area of Science:

  • Cellular and Molecular Biophysics
  • Computational Biology
  • Biophysics

Background:

  • Understanding protein diffusion within cells is crucial for cellular function.
  • Previous methods often lack the resolution to differentiate diffusion in various cellular compartments.
  • Confocal microscopy provides 3D structural data but has limitations in resolving fine structures affecting diffusion.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To introduce a novel mesoscopic modeling method for protein diffusion across an entire cell.
  • To account for sub-resolution cellular structures impacting protein motion by incorporating effective porosity.
  • To differentiate and quantify protein diffusion in distinct cellular environments like cytosol/nucleosol versus cytoplasm/nucleoplasm.

Main Methods:

  • Constructing a 3D digital cell model from confocal microscopy data.
  • Segmenting the model into key cellular compartments (cytoplasm, nucleus, membranes).
  • Applying fully numerical mesoscopic methods to model protein motion, incorporating position-dependent porosity derived from fluorescent protein distribution.

Main Results:

  • Successfully applied the method to analyze fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) experiments.
  • Quantified diffusion coefficients for a model protein in two cell lines.
  • Observed significant differences in diffusion rates between cytoplasm/nucleoplasm and cytosol/nucleosol, with cytosol results aligning well with fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS).

Conclusions:

  • The new mesoscopic modeling approach provides a more accurate representation of protein diffusion within the complex cellular environment.
  • The method successfully explains discrepancies between conventional FRAP and FCS measurements.
  • This technique offers a powerful tool for studying intracellular transport dynamics and validating biophysical models.