Length dependence of viscoelasticity of entangled-DNA solution with and without external stress

Abstract

We observed the diffusive motion of a micron-sized bead in an entangled-DNA solution to investigate the effect of the viscoelasticity on the bead motion. In the absence of external stress (passive microrheology), subdiffusion appears in the timescale of 0.1–10 s, and the normal diffusion recovers in longer timescales. We evaluated the apparent viscosity and elasticity, which yields a simple relaxation time for the viscoelastic medium. We found that the absence of DNA-length dependence for the time-dependent diffusion is explained by the simple relaxation of the viscoelastic media rather than the reptation dynamics, including the disentanglement. On the other hand, in the presence of a small external stress in active microrheology, the bead motion showed clear length dependence owing to the viscoelasticity. These results suggest that the viscoelasticity of the entangled DNA is highly sensitive to the external stress, even in the linear response regime.