The cytoskeleton of eukaryotic cells is a three-dimensional polymer
network
composed of rather stiff protein fibres like actin filaments and microtubules.
The physics of these biopolymers is fundamentally different from the
physics
of synthetic polymers such as polyethylene. Due to the high flexibilityof
the
C-C bonds along their backbone, synthetic polymers are well characterized
in terms of freely jointed chains, i.e. the physics of random walks.
In contrast,
actin filaments have a persistence length comparable to their total
length.
This implies that the physics is determined by a subtle interplay between
energetic and entropic contributions. These systems open up a new field
of soft condensed matter research, which has a great potential for
interesting
new phenomena as well as technological applications. We will introduce
into a statistical mechanics description of semiflexible polymers and
networks. This will cover physics concepts ranging from diffusion on
a unit
sphere over scaling theories to continuum percolation models.