Berlin 2008 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 7: Posters I

BP 7.22: Poster

Montag, 25. Februar 2008, 17:00–19:30, Poster A

Theory of Mechano-Transduction in Cells — •Sebastian Sturm¹, Jens Glaser¹, and Klaus Kroy^1,2 — ¹Institut für theoretische Physik, Universität Leipzig, Vor dem Hospitaltore 1, 04103 Leipzig — ²Hahn-Meitner Institut, Glienicker Straße 100, 14109 Berlin

No higher forms of life could exist without the ability of biological cells to quickly sense and react to changes in their environment. In general, stimuli excite the cell membrane and have to be transmitted to the nucleus. Mechano-transduction through the cytoskeleton may arguably provide the fastest pathway for mechanical stimuli. Understanding the dynamics of tension propagation through biopolymer networks is thus an important task.

Our approach combines two highly successful recent theoretical developments: (i) a systematic theory of tension propagation in single semiflexible polymers [1]; (ii) the glassy wormlike chain (GWLC) model [2], which accounts for the influence of a crowded environment on polymer dynamics. We discuss asymptotic solutions of the theory for different force protocols to derive experimentally relevant predictions.

[1] O. Hallatschek, E. Frey and K. Kroy, Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 077804 (2005)

[2] K. Kroy and J. Glaser, arXiv:0705.0490