Fig. 4

Time-dependent clustering of GNPs in endosomes for CL1-0 cells. Comparison of the number of endosomes \(\Sigma\) with clusters containing 4–6, 7–12 and more than 12 GNPs obtained by integration of time-dependent density \(n(x,\tau )\) Eq. (14) (the dashed, the dashed-dotted and the dotted curves) with the experimental data of Wang et al. (2016) (the lines with symbols and error bars) for CL1-0 cells. Here \(\tau =K t\) is the dimensionless time. The initial number of endosomes in each group was 100 (endosomes with clusters containing 4–6), 100 (containing 7–12 clusters) and 15 (containing \(>12\) clusters). Experimental data points were acquired starting from \(t=1\) h (Wang et al. 2016)