Confined mobility in biomembranes modeled by early stage Brownian motion.

An equation of motion, derived from the fractal analysis of the Brownian particle trajectory, makes it possible to calculate the time dependence of the mean square displacement for early times, before the Einstein formula becomes valid. The diffusion coefficient increases with the distance travelled which can be restricted by the geometrical conditions. The corresponding diffusion coefficient cannot increase further to achieve a value characteristic for unrestricted environment. Explicit formula is derived for confined diffusivity related to the unrestricted one as dependent on the maximum particle mean square displacement possible normalized by the square of its mean free path. The model describes the lipid and protein diffusion in tubular membranes with different radii, originally fitted by the modified Saffman-Delbrück equation, and the lateral mobility of synthetic model peptides for which the diffusion coefficient is inversely proportional to the radius of the diffusing object and to the thickness of the membrane.