Direct measurement of single soft lipid nano-tubes: nano-scale   information extracted in non-invasive manner
  We investigated the dynamics of single soft nano-tubes of phospholipids to extract nano-scale information such as size of tube, which are several tens to hundreds of nano-meters thick. The scaling law of the nano-tube dynamics in quasi-2-dimensional space was revealed to be constituent with that of a polymer. The dynamic properties of the tubes obtained from direct observation by fluorescent microscopy, such as their persistence length, enable us to access the nano-scale characteristics through a simple elastic model of the membrane. The present methodology should be applicable to the nano-sized membrane structure in living cells. 
Akihisa Yamamoto and Masatoshi Ichikawa (Kyoto University, Japan)
cond-mat.soft cond-mat.mes-hall