Dresden 2009 – scientific programme
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 9: Actin Dynamics
BP 9.7: Talk
Tuesday, March 24, 2009, 12:30–12:45, ZEU 260
Cutting viscoelastic materials, the theoretical basis of orientation sensitive stress measurements — •Martin Depken1, Mirjam Mayer2, Justin Bois1, Frank Jülicher1, and Stephan Grill1,2 — 1Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden, Germany — 2Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany
Laser ablation is an important tool to analyze stress distributions in the cell cortex and in the tissues of developing organisms. To describe the response of the cell cortex to such a perturbation, we utilize a hydrodynamic description of active viscoelastic materials. For these materials the initial velocity response is shown to be proportional to the local stress before ablation. This method provides a direction sensitive measure of stress differences, and applying this method to the C. elegans cell cortex we find that the stress can be both anisotropic and inhomogeneous. This constitutes a new tool for the studies of stress in active cellular systems.