Collaborators:

Jens-Uwe Sommer, Ron Dockhorn, Marco Werner, and Ankush Checkervarty

Introduction:

Polymers are most important components of living matter. Thus, concepts of polymer physics can be applied to understand processes in biology. On the other hand synthetic polymer systems are in contact with living matter in biophysical or medical applications. In most cases the natural environment is a aqueous solution. Charge effects caused by dissociation of monomer units into charged monomers and counter-ions play an important role for water-soluble systems. On the other hand, self-organized structures emerging from the interplay of hydrophilic and hydrophobic effects are of interest. We investigate specific biological processes using theoretical concepts and simulation methods of polymer physics. We are also interested in understanding the properties of polymer materials which can be used as functional environments for biological systems such as extracellular matrices.

• J. Sievers, S. Zschoche, R. Dockhorn, J. Friedrichs, C. Werner and U. Freudenberg
  Temperature-Induced Mechanomodulation of Interpenetrating Networks of Star Poly(ethylene glycol)–Heparin and Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide)
  ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 11 (2019), 41862-41874
• U.Freudenberg, J.-U. Sommer, K.R. Levental, P.B. Welzel, A. Zieris, K. Chwalek, K. Schneider, S. Prokoph, M. Prewitz, R. Dockhorn, C. Werner
  Using Mean Field Theory to Guide Biofunctional Materials Design
  Adv. Funct. Mater. 22 (2012), 1391-1398
• J.-U. Sommer, R. Dockhorn, P. Welzel, U. Freudenberg and C. Werner
  Swelling Equilibrium of a Binary Polymer Gel
  Macromolecules 44 (2011) 981–986
• R. Dockhorn and J.-U. Sommer
  A Model for Segregation of Chromatin after Replication: Segregation of Identical Flexible Chains in Solution
  Biophysical Journal 100 (2011) 2539-2547