Dresden 2003 – scientific programme

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CPP: Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik

CPP 12: Strukturierte Polymeroberfl
ächen

CPP 12.1: Talk

Thursday, March 27, 2003, 10:15–10:30, ZEU/260

Spatially periodic patterns in reactive stiff polymer systems — •Falko Ziebert and Walter Zimmermann — Theor. Physik, Universität des Saarlandes, 66041 Saarbrücken

Cell biology is full of stiff polymers under nonequilibrium conditions. Stiff polymers, such actin filaments and microtubules, are continuously growing and decaying in a living cell. At a high filament density they may undergo a first–order transition from the isotropic to the nematic phase. If the filaments have fixed length Onsager theory predicts a phase separation in ranges with high filament density and nematic order and ranges with low density where the filaments are isotropically distributed. Asymptotically these ranges coarsen to large domains. On the basis of the Smoluchowski equation for rigid rods as well as minimal phenomenological models for the isotropic–nematic coexistence including polymerization kinetics we predict the following: The continuous growth and decay of biopolymers, such as actin, together with the nematic ordering induces periodic stripe pattern with alternating nematic and isotropic order.