Dresden 2026 – wissenschaftliches Programm

Bereiche | Tage | Auswahl | Suche | Aktualisierungen | Downloads | Hilfe

DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 57: Statistical Physics of Biological Systems IV (joint session BP/DY)

DY 57.2: Vortrag

Freitag, 13. März 2026, 10:00–10:15, BAR/SCHÖ

Motor shot noise explains active fluctuations in a single cilium — •Maximilian Kotz¹, Veikko F. Geyer², and Benjamin M. Friedrich¹ — ¹Cluster of Excellence Physics of Life, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany — ²B CUBE, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany

Molecular motors drive seemingly regular motion, making living matter move - yet also cause non-equilibrium fluctuations that can serve as a probe of internal motor dynamics. Here, we use motile cilia as a model system to investigate how small-number fluctuations shape collective dynamics. Motile cilia exhibit regular bending waves; this motion is driven by the self-coordinated activity of thousands of molecular motors inside the cilia's cytoskeletal core. By developing, to the best of our knowledge, the first stochastic model of cilia beating, we show that the finite number of motors leads to active fluctuations on the mesoscale, sufficient to explain frequency jitter in beating cilia observed in experimental data. We rigorously compare observables of this model, including the quality factor of the oscillation, to experimental data in which motors have been partially extracted from cilia. This is a strong test of this stochastic model. The model also reproduces other phenomena of experimental data, like correlation lengths of intra-cilium synchronization and noise-induced phase slips. We propose that active fluctuations are important new observables, which can guide theoretical models of motor dynamics in beating cilia and other motor systems.

Keywords: cilia; small number fluctuations; molecular motor