Brennan Sprinkle, Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, Colorado School of Mines

Numerical methods for fluctuating suspensions of fibers and rigid bodies

The inherent randomness of sub-cellular processes, combined with the constantly changing structure of cytoskeletal networks, makes the microscopic dynamics of a cell difficult or impossible to carefully quantify using lab measurements or existing simulation techniques. I'll introduce a novel and efficient method to simulate microscopic fiber networks, specifically emphasizing the its application for suspensions such as the cellular cytoskeleton. This method utilizes efficient linear algebra and precise temporal integration to simulate Brownian dynamics of flexible, fluctuating, and inextensible microfilament suspensions with linear complexity. I’ll describe how this method generalizes to include arbitrarily shaped rigid bodies and how we can utilize this generalization to study the rheology of fibrous gels