  We present a novel method to investigate the dynamics of a single
semiflexible polymer, subject to anisotropic friction in a viscous fluid. In
contrast to previous approaches, we do not rely on a discrete bead-rod model,
but introduce a suitable normal mode decomposition of a continuous space curve.
By means of a perturbation expansion for stiff filaments we derive a closed set
of coupled Langevin equations in mode space for the nonlinear dynamics in two
dimensions, taking into account exactly the local constraint of
inextensibility. The stochastic differential equations obtained this way are
solved numerically, with parameters adjusted to describe the motion of actin
filaments. As an example, we show results for the tumbling motion in shear
flow.
