This video shows the moving trajectory of a ganglioside GM1, which is a glycosphingolipid residing on the outer leaflet of the membrane of a living Xenopus muscle cell dissected after two days. The GM1is labeled by a fluorescent quantum dot. The movie was obtained using an inverted Leica microscope equipped with an Andor Ixon3 897 EMCCD camera. The video is played in real time and the scale bar is 2.5 �gm. The GM1 trajectory is digitally magnified by ~3 times for clearer display.

Click the picture to see the real-time motion of the GM1 on the live cell membrane. In a period of 190s, one sees the GM1 is transiently confined in three small domains of size 1~2 �gm. Such confinement effect causes dynamic heterogeneity of the GM1s on live cell membrane.