Karsten Kruse
We study the formation of spatial and temporal structures in individual biological cells and cells assemblies. The focus of our work is on theoretical descriptions of cytoskeletal dynamics. The cytoskeleton is a network of filamentous proteins, which is kept permanently out of thermodynamic equilibrium. It enables cells to divide, determines their shape and plays an important role in cell locomotion. In our descriptions, we rely heavily on concepts from non-linear dynamics and from non-equilibrium statistical mechanics.