Regensburg 2025 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 17: Poster Session II

BP 17.56: Poster

Dienstag, 18. März 2025, 18:00–20:30, P4

Mechanical Properties of Intermediate Filament Networks — •Jonas Penning and Stefan Klumpp — Institute for Dynamics of complex systems, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Friedrich-Hund-Platz 1, 37077 Göttingen

The mechanical strength and dynamics of cells are essential for sustaining life. For instance, during simple activities such as breathing or walking, cells are subjected to significant tensile stresses as they are stretched, sheared, or compressed. The cytoskeleton - a cross-linked composite network of actin, microtubules, and intermediate filaments - plays a central role in determining the cells’ mechanical properties. While actin and microtubule networks have been studied extensively, this work focuses on intermediate filaments, such as vimentin and keratin. Compared to actin, intermediate filaments exhibit much smaller persistence lengths, but are much more stretchable with highly nonlinear elasticity. Extedning the freely-jointed chain (FJC) model by nonlinear stretching elasticity, a simplified model has been developed to investigate the mechanical and physical properties of cross-linked intermediate filament networks. Analogous to experimental approaches, the mechanical properties of the model are tested by applying normal and shear strains or stresses and analyzing the resulting responses.

Keywords: Numerical simulation; Cell mechanics; Polymer network; Intermediate filaments; Nonlinear Elasticity