Figure 1 | Scientific Reports

Figure 1

From: Cortical actin networks induce spatio-temporal confinement of phospholipids in the plasma membrane – a minimally invasive investigation by STED-FCS

Figure 1

Detecting compartmentalised diffusion with a small lipid probe.

(a) Schematic showing branched actin networks (magenta) and associated membrane achors (orange), which partially confine two-dimensional diffusion of molecules. As exemplarily shown by single-molecule diffusion tracks (blue), molecules are assumed to diffuse freely within compartments and in the event of hitting the compartment boundaries, transposition to the adjacent compartment occurs with a certain hopping probability Phop. (b) Schematic of lipid probes used in SPT and in STED-FCS, put in perspective (from left to right): gold particle (yellow, ~40 nm in diameter) linked to a lipid (orange: chains, light red: head group) by Fab antibody fragment (green) and QD (red, ~20 nm in diameter) linked to two lipids via streptavidin (blue), as often used in SPT; and a fluorescent lipid analogue (dark red: organic dye, ~1 nm in diameter), as used in STED-FCS. Possible oligomerisation induced by SPT probes is illustrated for the QD. The membrane bilayer is shown in orange and the actin cytoskeleton in grey.

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