TY - JOUR A1 - Huber, Florian A1 - Schnauß, Jörg A1 - Rönicke, S. A1 - Rauch, P. A1 - Müller, K. A1 - Fütterer, C. A1 - Käs, Josef T1 - Emergent complexity of the cytoskeleton: from single filaments to tissue JF - Advances in Physics N2 - Despite their overwhelming complexity, living cells display a high degree of internal mechanical and functional organization which can largely be attributed to the intracellular biopolymer scaffold, the cytoskeleton. Being a very complex system far from thermodynamic equilibrium, the cytoskeleton's ability to organize is at the same time challenging and fascinating. The extensive amounts of frequently interacting cellular building blocks and their inherent multifunctionality permits highly adaptive behavior and obstructs a purely reductionist approach. Nevertheless (and despite the field's relative novelty), the physics approach has already proved to be extremely successful in revealing very fundamental concepts of cytoskeleton organization and behavior. This review aims at introducing the physics of the cytoskeleton ranging from single biopolymer filaments to multicellular organisms. Throughout this wide range of phenomena, the focus is set on the intertwined nature of the different physical scales (levels of complexity) that give rise to numerous emergent properties by means of self-organization or self-assembly. Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:hbz:due62-opus-34812 UR - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24748680 SN - 1460-6976 N1 - Acknowledgment: We thank Klaus Kroy, Dan Strehle, Tobias Kießling, Matti Gralka, Harald Herrmann, Denis Wirtz, and Michael Höckel for very helpful comments, discussions, and proof reading. We further like to thank Steve Pawlizak, Thomas Fuhs, Daniel Koch, BjöStuhrmann, and Franziska Wetzel for contributing data and additional illustrations. This work was supported by the graduate school “Building with Molecules and Nano-Objects” (BuildMoNa). VL - 62 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 112 PB - Taylor & Francis ER -