MPIDS Colloquium: Fluid dynamics of living cells

The organized movement of intracellular fluids is part of the functioning of cells and the development of organisms. These flows often arise from the action of molecular motors on the transitory and flex-ible scaffoldings of the cell. That sounds complex and multiscaled, as is much of biology, but its study is also becoming a beautiful sub-branch of fluid dynamics characterized by geometric complexity, confinement, and microscale activity. Understanding phenomena in this realm has necessitated the de-velopment of new simulation tools, and of new coarse-grain mathematical models to analyze and sim-ulate. In that context, I'll discuss how genetic material is "properly" positioned within a cell, how a symmetry-breaking "swirling" instability may be an important part of the development of an oocyte, and how flows in the nucleus give us clues to its internal mechanics.