Regensburg 2013 – scientific programme
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 1: Cell migration
BP 1.8: Talk
Monday, March 11, 2013, 11:45–12:00, H43
Search patterns of human T-cells — •Marc Neef1, Hélène Lyrmann2, Carsten Kummerow2, Markus Hoth2, and Karsten Kruse1 — 1Theoretische Physik, Universität des Saarlandes, 66041 Saarbrücken — 2Biophysik, Universität des Saarlandes, 66421 Homburg
At the start of immune response, the T-cells have no detailed information about the locations of their target cells, so they have to perform a random search. The effectiveness of this search depends on the geometry of the search area as well as on the type of the random search. We track primary human T-lymphocytes using in vitro time-lapse microscopy and compare the experimental tracks to theoretical models like Lévy-Walks, persistent random walks and more complex models. We analyse displacements, gyration and velocity auto correlation of experimental and theoretical tracks and find, that these features are best fitted with a model, that alternates between persistent motion and a resting phase.
Furthermore we test the effectiveness (i.e. average search time) of different search models in simple geometries. We find that the most effective model as well as the optimal parameters for this model strongly depend on the system size.