Regensburg 2016 – scientific programme

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SYAD: Symposium Anomalous Diffusion in Complex Environments

SYAD 1: Anomalous Diffusion in Complex Environments

SYAD 1.4: Invited Talk

Thursday, March 10, 2016, 16:45–17:15, H15

Ergodicity violation and ageing in living biological cells — •Ralf Metzler — Institute of Physics and Astronomy, University of Potsdam, 14476 Potsdam-Golm, Germany

In 1905 Einstein formulated the laws of diffusion, and in 1908 Perrin published his Nobel-prize winning studies determining Avogadro’s number from diffusion measurements. With similar, more refined techniques the diffusion behaviour in complex systems such as the motion of tracer particles in living biological cells is nowadays measured with high precision. Often the diffusion turns out to deviate from Einstein’s laws.

This talk will discuss the basic mechanisms leading to anomalous diffusion as well as point out the physical and biological consequences, for instance, in gene regulation or cargo transport in cells. In particular the unconventional behaviour of non-ergodic, ageing systems will be discussed. Concrete examples include the motion of submicron and nanoprobes in biological cells, uncrowded and crowded lipid membranes, as well as interacting many particle systems.