Scientific Report on
International Workshop
Random Walks and Nonlinear Dynamics in the Life of Cells

While the meetings on random walks, anomalous diffusion and their applications has become traditional for the MPI-PKS and were always attracting world leading experts in the field, it was the intention of the organizers to make a step in a new direction. A biophysical community of Dresden is one of the characteristic examples of how rapidly the field of molecular and cell biology and theoretical physics approach each other. A growing amount of collaboration between scientists in those fields lead to a number of definitive breakthroughs. Stochastic processes and nonlinear phenomena are ubiquitous in biology, but only recently, due to significant advances in the experimental techniques, they were detected at the level of individual cells. Therefore it was the purpose of the workshop to emphasize the intersection of theory and newest of experiments with the hallmarks of random walks and non-linear dynamics and their role in the life of cells.

By putting together the program of this workshop we could achieve a good balance of theory and experiment but with a smooth transition through the speakers who are actively working in both. Interestingly even by selecting an apparently narrow theme of the conference, a very diverse set of topics could be covered. Major discussion lines of the conference were on the mechanisms of individual cell motility, bacterial colonies, mechano-chemistry of cell organization and patterning, and anomalous diffusion. As usual for a conference with so many outstanding speakers it is hard to highlight the most noticeable contributions. The talks by Tony Hyman (MPI-CBG, Dresden) and Stephan Grill (TU Dresden) showed most recent developments in our biophysical understanding of protein organization in the cytoplasm and mechano-chemical processes governing the early embryonic development. Paul Janmey (University of Pennsylvania, USA) and Gijsje Koenderink (AMOLF, Amsterdam) discussed a highly non-trivial dynamics of cytoskeletal networks in the living cells. Berenike Maier (University of Köln) and Gerard Wong (UCLA, USA) reported their work on bacterial colonies - biofilms - a very extensively growing filed of interdisciplinary research with a tight connection to applications in medicine and bio-engineering. It was our feeling that despite the variety of topics the participants were really communicating on the ''same language'' as the problems of non-linear dynamics and random walks were bridging their research. We are certain that many more great collaborations will develop from the interactions started on the workshop.

In the proposal to the conference we put a special emphasis on younger participants. Out of 33 talks, 8 were delivered by young researchers who were at the stage of starting their own group or being a senior postdoc. It should be noted that we had many more good candidates for the short talk presentations than we had slots. Two poster sessions were very actively attended on both days and served the main platform for after-talks discussions (along with the excursion and conference dinner). A colloquium talk by Janá Kondev (co-author of the book on Physical Biology of the Cell) deserves a special mention. As anticipated it was a highly pedagogical account of basics and recent developments in our understanding of the physics of chromatin. It was given on a very accessible level and ended with a very intensive discussion involving the participants of the conference, members of the institute and listeners from local institutions in Dresden.

The event was truly international with 60 workshop participants from 23 countries, including UK, USA, India, Ukraine, Sweden, Israel, Poland, Italy, Russia, China and South Africa. By advertising the workshop in Dresden we were happy to see many attendees (students and group leaders) from the MPI-CBG, B-Cube, and BIOTEC. We also enjoyed the flawless, effective and supportive work of the Visitors Program of the MPI-PKS (Mandy Lochar) and provided facilities. We hope that soon there will another opportunity to organize the next scientific event in Dresden.

For further information please e-mail to:
sincel15pks.mpg.de