Stochastic Modeling of Anomalous Dynamics in Complex Physical and Biological Systems. Conference at the Wroclaw University of Technology

Stochastic Modeling of Anomalous Dynamics in Complex Physical and Biological Systems. Conference at the Wroclaw University of Technology

The International Conference Stochastic Modeling of Anomalous Dynamics in Complex Physical and Biological Systems was held at the Wroclaw University of Technology on 14-16 May 2015. The conference was organized by the Hugo Steinhaus Center.

The main objective of the conference was to bring together a variety of researchers, practitioners and graduate students of physics, biology and mathematics whose work is related to anomalous diffusion, fractional dynamics, intercellular biology, single particle tracking experiments and stochastic processes. The conference was meant as a platform to exchange ideas and solutions to initiate collaboration between participants.

The field of biophysics and biomedicine has seen an immense increase in single particle tracking techniques and experimental results. In the past decade, trajectories have been obtained for almost all biological entities, including in vivo and in vitro measurements that cover dynamics from the cell membrane to the nucleoplasm. Biological trajectories are usually stochastic and affected by a great deal of randomness arising from thermal motion of surrounding molecules, spatial constraints, complex molecular interactions, water molecules on cell membranes and more. While all these sources of stochasticity give rise to diffusive motion, each source has different characteristics, which can give important information regarding the biophysical system.

The event was truly international with more than 60 participants from 10 countries, namely Poland, Germany, Israel, USA, France, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Finland and Ukraine. The conference was open to younger participants, especially master’s students of Mathematics for Industry and Commerce (MIC Master’s) programme, which runs at the Wroclaw University of Technology as an ECMI Regular Teaching Center.

During the conference 34 talks were presented by outstanding speakers, mostly being world’s leading experts in their fields. It is impossible to highlight all of them, but let us just name a few of them. Ralf Metzler (University of Potsdam) presented three cases in which many particle interactions effect distinct anomalous diffusion. The first system followed a tracer particle in a flexible gel made up of excluded volume particles connected by Morse springs. The second case was that of single file diffusion in a disordered environment. The third case was that of a granular gas with either constant restitution coefficient of pair-colliding particles or with a relative speed dependence of the restitution coefficient. Davide Calebiro (Bio-Imaging Center/Rudolf Virchow Center and Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Würzburg) showed that G protein-coupled receptors signaling cascades are at the same time very dynamic and yet highly organized in space and time. These data suggested the existence of dynamic receptor nanodomains on the surface of cells, which might be required for achieving high signaling efficiency and specificity. Yuval Garini (Bar-Ilan University, Israel) rationalized that the viscoelasticity results from a cross-linking mechanism that is most likely mediated by a protein or a protein complex. He identified the source protein and showed that a phase transition from viscoelastic to viscous diffusion occurs when its expression is inhibited.

Because of the great interest and the positive feedback from the participants the conference is planned to be repeated now every second year. We are also certain that many more great collaborations will develop from the interactions started at the conference.

For the detailed programme of the conference and talk abstracts please visit http://smad2015.im.pwr.edu.pl/.

Contact person:

Krzysztof Burnecki (Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland)

e-mail: krzysztof.burnecki@pwr.edu.pl