- 著者
-
Junko Kamiguri
Noriko Tsuchiya
Ruri Hidema
Zenji Yatabe
Masahiko Shoji
Chihiro Hashimoto
Robert Bernard Pansu
Hideharu Ushiki
- 出版者
- The Biophysical Society of Japan
- 雑誌
- BIOPHYSICS (ISSN:13492942)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.8, pp.11-19, 2012 (Released:2012-01-17)
- 参考文献数
- 29
- 被引用文献数
-
2
2
The contraction process of living Vorticella sp. in polymer solutions with various viscosities has been investigated by image processing using a high-speed video camera. The viscosity of the external fluid ranges from 1 to 5 mPa·s for different polymer additives such as hydroxypropyl cellulose, polyethylene oxide, and Ficoll. The temporal change in the contraction length of Vorticella sp. in various macromolecular solutions is fitted well by a stretched exponential function based on the nucleation and growth model. The maximum speed of the contractile process monotonically decreases with an increase in the external viscosity, in accordance with power law behavior. The index values approximate to 0.5 and this suggests that the viscous energy dissipated by the contraction of Vorticella sp. is constant in a macromolecular environment.