Münchner Physik Kolloquium: Force generation by cells and tissues

by Ulrich Schwarz (Department of Physics and Astronomy, Universität Heidelberg)

Monday 18 Jul 2011, 17:15 → 18:45 Europe/Berlin

Hörsaal H 030 (Fakultät für Physik der LMU, Schellingstr. 4, München)

Not only muscle cells, but also most other cell types in our body exert forces to their environment. In this talk we discuss how these forces are generated and which function they play in the life of cells. We present simple models for the generation of both contractile and protrusive force, and explain how these forces can be measured and analyzed based on recent advances in biophysics and materials science. In particular, we will stress the emergence of cooperativity on all scales, including force-generating elements on the molecular level, load-bearing structures on the cellular level, and different cells on a tissue level