The art of cell locomotion: swimming, steering, synchronization

Date

Mar 26, 2015

Time

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM

Speaker

Benjamin Friedrich

Affiliation

MPI-PKS Dresden

Series

TUD ZIH Kolloquium

Language

en

Main Topic

Informatik

Other Topics

Biologie, Informatik

Host

Ralph Müller-Pfefferkorn, Zentrum für Informationsdienste und Hochleistungsrechnen

Description

We study how single cells swim and respond to sensory cues. Sperm cells can steer their swimming path in response to chemical cues released by the egg. I present a theory explaining how a simple feedback mechanisms aligns the helical swimming paths of these cells with the direction of a concentration gradient. In a second part, I will show how purely mechanical forces stabilize the swimming gait of a swimming alga (Chlamydomonas). This alga swims like a breast-swimmer with two flagella that must keep a common rhythm. These theories of biological motility control are confirmed by experiments performed by our experimental collaboration partners. We developed novel image and data analysis algorithms to analyze these experiments, following inspiration by theory.
Benjamin Friedrich is a theoretical physicist, who is curious on "how biological systems work". He studied mathematics in Leipzig and Cambridge, before he moved to biological physics. For his PhD with Frank Jülicher on "How sperm find the egg", he was awarded the Otto-Hahn medal of the Max Planck society. After a post-doc with Sam Safran in Israel, he is now an independent researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems.

Links

• http://tu-dresden.de/veranstaltungen/termin?id=TUD54e6024dc93af

Last modified: Mar 26, 2015, 8:42:04 AM