Our goal is to identify the physical principles governing life and making them available to overcome disease and invent novel smart and robotic materials. Investigating an inherently interdisciplinary challenge spanning biological, statistical physics & mechanics, cell, developmental & synthetic biology as well regenerative medicine we focus on how flow and active, living matter feed back onto each other and thus control the architecture of vascular i.e., flow, networks and their surprisingly complex function. To reach our goal we employ an interplay of experimental observation, quantification of observations and theory and its predictions.
News
Size as a foraging strategy
We discovered that superdiffusive migration in Physarum results from size-dependent self-avoidance. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 121 (13), e2312611121 (2024)
Our Physarum review!
Our review explores the physical aspects of this fascinating unicellular, from cell and fluid mechanics to network properties and behavior. Annu. Rev. Condens. Matter Phys. 2024. 15:263–89
Vein dynamics explained.
A colossal piece on vein dynamics in #Physarum. Veins spontaneously shrink or grow to increase nutrient spread. But since Physarum has no brain, how does it know which veins to shrink? eLife 12:e78100.
Cool documentary of our lab.
Cool documentary showing our labs. “Schlaue Tiere – verblüffte Forscher”, The trailer can be found here. Thanks to @AdrianBuchl!
Pore space governs transport.
We discovered how pore space geometry impacts transport of substances through fluids. #PorousMedia #IonBatteries #BloodVessels #BiologicalNetworks Nat Commun 13, 5885 (2022)
Funding
