Biological and Soft Matter Physics Group

Internal dynamics of biological polymers: DNA molecules, actin filaments

Oleg Krichevsky

The dynamics of a semi-flexible polymer

The problem of polymer dynamics is rather old, going back to the 1930-s. How the stochastic thermal motion (diffusion) reveals itself in the dynamics of polymer segments which are bound by connectivity along the chain, by polymer stiffness, by topological constrains, by hydrodynamic and other interactions? The question does not have simple solutions in neither theory, computer simulations, or experiments. We have developed an original experimental approach to measure the dynamics of biological polymers, such as DNA at the level of single monomer with high temporal and spatial resolution.