Scaling of the Microrheology of Semidilute F-Actin Solutions

The viscoelasticity of actin networks is probed over an extended range of frequencies using microrheology techniques, where the thermal motion of small beads in the network is measured using diffusing-wave spectroscopy. Despite large sample-to-sample variations, the data exhibit an unexpected scaling behavior and can all be collapsed onto a single master curve, indicative of a surprising universality in the elastic properties. The scaled data provide a precise measure of the average behavior of the actin networks and indicate that at high frequencies v, the shear modulus, increases as v3y4. [S0031-9007(99)08465-3]