Yixuan Li's thesis, titled: "Linking Particle Dynamics to Intracellular Micromechanics in Living Cells", defended 11 November 2009 at 15:00 in room Spiegel 2, describes how large numbers of colloidal particles can be introduced into the cytoplasm of living cells, and subsequently studied for their diffusive motions. The statistics of the collective motions can reveal unique information about the mechanical properties of the cytoskeleton (components) of healthy and diseased cells, before and after adding drugs. Four different studies were performed, connecting to fundamental aspects of cytoskeleton mechanics as well as to the potential use of intracellular particle tracking in mechanobiology.
