Regensburg 2010 – scientific programme
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 5: Posters: Biopolymers and Biomaterials
BP 5.27: Poster
Monday, March 22, 2010, 17:15–20:00, Poster B1
Transport of a semiflexible filament in a network — •Teresa Bauer1, Felix Höfling1,2, Erwin Frey1, and Thomas Franosch1,3 — 1Arnold Sommerfeld Center (ASC) for Theoretical Physics and Center for NanoScience (CeNS), Fakultät für Physik, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany — 2Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics, University of Oxford, United Kingdom — 3Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany
The cytoskeleton of a cell is comprised of a network of various biopolymers. A prominent example is the filamentous actin, a semiflexible polymer studied extensively also in vitro. The transport of a single semiflexible filament in a strongly entangled network is highly directed along the confining tube formed by the surrounding network.
We have investigated the dynamics of a semiflexible filament in a plane in the presence of immobilized obstacles mimicking the constraints of the crosslinked network. The inextensibility constraints are encoded via a bead-rod-algorithm extended by a suitable collision rule and extensive simulations are performed. In particular we measure the translational and rotational diffusion investigated for a broad density range. Furthermore we discuss the role of undulations as the filament leaves its confining tube when the persistence length is varied.