Dresden 2011 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 6: Statistical Physics of Biological Systems II (joint DY, BP)

BP 6.5: Talk

Monday, March 14, 2011, 15:15–15:30, HÜL 186

Fluctuations of intracellular filaments — •Ines-Kristin Weber and Ludger Santen — Department of Theoretical Physics, Saarland University, 66041 Saarbrücken

The cytoskeleton is an inhomogeneous network of polar filaments consisting of, amongst others, microtubules. These highly dynamic biopolymer filaments are involved in a wide variety of biological processes such as cell division and intracellular transport. Although they are very rigid and form a stiff structural network, it has been shown that they typically exhibit significant bending on all length scales. In this work we describe microtubules as semi-flexible polymers and investigate their fluctuations under thermal and non-thermal forces by means of computer simulations and phenomenological approaches.