Toward a more biologically accurate model of diffusion: adhesion and collisions. (December 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Fouad, Ahmed M; Noel, John A
• Is Part Of: Simulation. Volume 93:Number 12(2017)
• Page Start: 1037
• Page End: 1044
• Publication Date: 2017-12
• Subjects: Adhesive particle flow -- single-file dynamics -- Monte Carlo simulations -- Brownian motion -- numerical modeling; Computer simulation -- Periodicals; 003.3
• DOI: 10.1177/0037549717720024
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0037-5497

Abstract

In single-file dynamics, Brownian particles (referred to as tracer or tagged particles) diffuse and collide with each other in one-dimensional domains. If the average particle density is kept fixed during the diffusion, the collisions between the tracer particles result in their famous anomalous sub-diffusion behavior with time to the one half dependence. Many systems in nature are found to obey single-file dynamics, such as ion transport processes, and inter-particle adhesion plays a crucial role, either structurally or functionally, in the diffusion of such systems; however, the exact effect of adhesion on the diffusion has not been studied so far. We have examined the effect of adhesion on the collective diffusion of single-file systems. Here, we extend previous work where we perform large-scale numerical simulations that utilize Monte Carlo techniques and high-performance computing resources to examine the effect of adhesion on the diffusion of the tracer particles in systems that obey single-file dynamics. We show that if all the tracer particles experience the same adhesion coefficient, adhesion only slows down the diffusion by reducing the magnitude of the tracer diffusion coefficient; however, both the anomalous sub-diffusion behavior and time to the one half dependence of the tracer particles remain almost intact, independent of the adhesion.