Related papers: Mechanical response of active gels
We present a microscopic model of a disordered viscoelastic active solid, i.e. an active material whose long time behaviour is elastic as opposed to viscous. It is composed of filaments, passive crosslinks and molecular motors powered by…
Relations between static and dynamic viscoelastic responses in gels can be very elucidating and may provide useful tools to study the behavior of bio-materials such as protein hydrogels. An important example comes from the viscoelasticity…
Motor-proteins are responsible for transport inside cells. Harnessing their activity is key towards developing new nano-technologies, or functional biomaterials. Cytoskeleton-like networks, recently tailored in vitro, result from the…
By means of Langevin dynamics simulations, we investigate the gel formation of randomly functionalized polymers in solution, with the ability to form both intra- and intermolecular reversible bonds. Under highly dilute conditions, these…
Active materials with distinctive nonequilibrium properties have diverse materials science applications. Active systems are common in living matter, such as the filament network in the cell that is activated by molecular motors, and in…
In the perspective of developing smart hybrid materials with customized features, ferrogels and magnetorheological elastomers allow a synergy of elasticity and magnetism. The interplay between elastic and magnetic properties gives rise to a…
The symmetry breaking of the actin network from radial to longitudinal symmetry has been identified as the major mechanism for keratocytes (fish cells) motility on solid substrate. For strong friction coefficient, the two dimensional actin…
Cellular cargo can be bound to cytoskeletal filaments by one or multiple active or passive molecular motors. Recent experiments have shown that the presence of auxiliary, nondriving motors, results in an enhanced processivity of the cargo,…
Regulation of contraction in striated muscle is controlled by a dual mechanism involving both thin filaments containing actin and thick filaments containing myosin. The thin filament is activated by calcium ions binding to troponin, leading…
Based on a detailed crossbridge model for individual myosin II motors, we systematically study the influence of mechanical load and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) concentration on small myosin II ensembles made from different isoforms. For…
Using a simple model, we study the fluctuating dynamics of inextensible, semiflexible polar filaments interacting with active and directed force generating centres such as molecular motors. Taking into account the fact that the activity…
We model analytically the dynamics of a cytoskeletal filament in a motility assay. The filament is described as rigid rod free to slide in two dimensions. The motor proteins consist of polymeric tails tethered to the plane and modeled as…
Experiments suggest that the migration of some cells in the three-dimensional extra cellular matrix bears strong resemblance to one-dimensional cell migration. Motivated by this observation, we construct and study a minimal one-dimensional…
We investigate the dynamics of alginate gels, an important class of biopolymer-based viscoelastic materials, by combining mechanical tests and non-conventional, time-resolved light scattering methods. Two relaxation modes are observed upon…
We report analytical and numerical modelling of active elastic networks, motivated by experiments on crosslinked actin networks contracted by myosin motors. Within a broad range of parameters, the motor-driven collapse of active elastic…
Many organisms have an elastic skeleton that consists of a closed shell of epithelial cells that is filled with fluid, and can actively regulate both elastic forces in the shell and hydrostatic pressure inside it. In this work we introduce…
Active semiflexible filaments are crucial in various biophysical processes, yet insights into their single-filament behavior have predominantly relied on theory and simulations, owing to the scarcity of controllable synthetic systems. Here,…
Mesh-like structures, such as mucus gel or cytoskeleton networks, are ubiquitous in biological systems. These intricate structures are composed of cross-linked, semi-flexible bio-filaments, crucial to numerous biological processes. In many…
Cytoskeletal motors known as motor proteins are molecules that drive cellular transport along several parallel cytoskeletal filaments and support many biological processes. Experimental evidences suggest that they interact with the nearest…
The cytoskeleton protein actin assembles into large bundles when supporting stresses in the cell, but grows into a fine branched network to induce cell motion. Such self-organization processes are studied in artificial networks of…