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Plasma membrane topography and interpretation of single-particle tracks

Nature Methods volume 7, pages 170–171 (2010)Cite this article

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It is well established that molecules on cell surfaces appear to diffuse appreciably more slowly than on planar artificial membranes. Similarly, when we analyzed simulated movement over the non-flat surface of a live cell and a fixed cell in two dimensions (2D), the standard form of SPT analysis, the apparent rate of diffusion dropped; the effect varied with the local topography (Fig. 1b,c). Diffusion over simulated geometric surfaces also had a reduction in apparent movement4 (Supplementary Note and Supplementary Figs. 4, 5) and diffusion over a real anisotropically textured surface proved to be similarly anisotropic5. When analyzed in 2D, pillars emulated features of hop diffusion6, where barriers divide a surface into separate domains in which movement is locally unconstrained (Fig. 1d) but from which particles may be excluded or within which they may be confined. The vertical sides of pillars appeared to trap particles (Fig. 1d), a phenomenon we call apparent topographical trapping; for thin pillars, this resembled binding (Supplementary Fig. 6). In these simulations, exclusion, confinement and locally unconstrained movement are artifacts produced by following movement over a non-flat surface in 2D. On membrane blebs, hop diffusion vanishes and diffusion rates are similar to those on reconstituted planar membranes7, which is compatible both with the loss of diffusion barriers and with smoothing of the membrane.

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Figure 1: Cell topography compromises interpretation of SPT data.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by Carl Trygger's Fund to J.A. and I.P., the Längmanska's Fund to I.P. and the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council to A.I.S, P.N. and Y.E.K. (BB/D020875).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Wenner-Gren Institute, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Jeremy Adler & Ingela Parmryd

  2. Division of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, UK

    Andrew I Shevchuk, Pavel Novak & Yuri E Korchev

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  1. Jeremy Adler
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  2. Andrew I Shevchuk
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  3. Pavel Novak
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  5. Ingela Parmryd
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Correspondence to Ingela Parmryd.

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Competing interests

P.N. has a consultancy agreement with Ionscope Ltd., a start-up company selling scanning ion conductance microscopes. A.I.S. and Y.E.K. are shareholders of Ionscope Ltd.

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Supplementary Figures 1–6, Supplementary Table 1, Supplementary Note (PDF 1986 kb)

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Adler, J., Shevchuk, A., Novak, P. et al. Plasma membrane topography and interpretation of single-particle tracks. Nat Methods 7, 170–171 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth0310-170

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