Abstract
Active and passive microrheology techniques for probing viscoelastic properties of biological samples require the embedding of micron-sized particles. This can give rise to local perturbations and surface interactions. These effects have to be taken into account during data evaluation and form an obstacle for the investigation of living cells.A way of circumventing these influences is the use of parts of the system itself, such as the microtubules in cells, as local probes by observing their thermal bending fluctuations in the surrounding medium. A detailed analysis of the spatial and temporal bending fluctuations can give information about local shear moduli and stress fluctuations in biopolymer networks in the absence of probe artifacts.We have investigated a network of filamentous actin by attaching nanometer-sized gold particles to embedded microtubules and have measured thermal motions of the gold particles with an optical trap by laser interferometry with high bandwidth. The results agree well with the expectations, providing a proof of principle of the new approach.
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