Andy Lau
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania
| One of the major challenge for modern biology is to understand how cells sense and produce force to respond to their environment in a directed manner. As a prerequisite, an accurate physical picture of the viscoelasticity and active behaviors of the cytoplasm requires powerful experimental techniques and theoretical modelling. Recently, microrheology has emerged as a new experimental tool to probe active cytoskeleton dynamics. In this talk, we provide a theoretical framework for interpreting passive microrheology experiments on non-equilibrium active systems such as living cells, demonstrate that two-point microrheology can be used to sensibly quantify the power spectrum of cytoskeletal stress fluctuations due to molecular motor activity in vivo, and propose a plausible microscopic model that explains the observed $1/f^2$ spectrum. |
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