QLS guest seminar

[Quantitative Life Sciences]

QLS Guest Seminar - Wednesday, 31 July at 14:30

ICTP, Central Area, 2nd floor, SISSA Building, via Beirut 2

Speaker:  Mendeli Henning Vainstein - Universidade Federal do Rio Grande 
do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazi

Title: Microscopic Langevin model for the modified Fürth equation

Abstract:
Recent experimental research on the mobility of living cells indicate 
that their diffusion is not completely described by Fürth's equation 
since they display a normal diffusive regime before the onset of the 
ballistic motion. Moreover, results from a cellular Potts model 
simulation for the motion of cells in two dimensions present the same 
type of behavior and a modification of Fürth's equation has been 
proposed to fit the mean squared displacements (MSD) found both 
experimentally and computationally. Here, we propose a microscopic 
Langevin model to explain this anomaly in the MSD: we show that a 
polarization direction for the persistent motion as well as at least two 
time scales are needed. The model reproduces well the MSD obtained from 
the modified Fürth equation and is robust to changes in the microscopic 
dynamics of the polarization as a function of cell migration speed, 
which is in agreement with experimental data which suggests that 
persistence of trajectories is coupled to cell migration speed mediated 
by actin flows.

Indico web page: http://indico.ictp.it/event/9012/



Everyone interested is most welcome to attend!

-- 
Erica Sarnataro
Group Secretary
Quantitative Life Sciences
The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP)
Trieste,  Italy
Tel. +39-040-2240623
www.ictp.it/research/qls.aspx
e-mail: qls at ictp.it