Regensburg 2010 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 5: Posters: Biopolymers and Biomaterials

BP 5.24: Poster

Monday, March 22, 2010, 17:15–20:00, Poster B1

The conformations of a stiff polymer in random media — •Marcel Hennes and Klaus Kroy — Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Leipzig, Deutschland

Stiff polymers play a crucial role in many biophysical processes. In the eukaryotic cell, they assemble to a dense meshwork, the cytoskeleton, which confers the cell its unique mechanical properties. In this highly crowded environment the conformations and dynamic properties of the biopolymers are strongly influenced by the surrounding macromolecules. The theoretical description of the resulting complicated many body problem is usually provided by a mean field Ansatz, like the tube model or the glassy wormlike chain [1].

Little attention has been paid so far to the effect of a quenched random environment on a stiff filament. We present a study of the influence of quenched random forces and a quenched random potential on the conformations of a semiflexible chain in the weakly bending rod limit. The results are obtained with the help of the replica trick, which has proved to be a successful tool in determining the characteristics of directed polymers and flexible chains in random media.

[1] K. Kroy, J. Glaser, New J. Phys. 9 (2007) 416.