Related papers: Microscopic basis for pattern formation and anomal…
The paper addresses the underlying source of two forms of induced anisotropy in granular materials: contact orientation anisotropy and contact force anisotropy. A rational, mathematical structure is reviewed for the manner in which fabric…
Cellular locomotion often involves the motion of thin, elastic filaments, such as cilia and flagella, in viscous environments. The manuscript serves as a general introduction to the topic of modelling microscale elastohydrodynamics. We…
Crosslinked semi-flexible and flexible filaments that are actively deformed by molecular motors occur in various natural settings, such as the ordered eukaryotic flagellum, and the disordered cytoskeleton. The deformation of these composite…
In thermodynamic equilibrium, the fluctuation-dissipation theorem links thermal fluctuations and dissipation. Biological systems, however, are driven out of equilibrium by internal processes that produce additional, active fluctuations.…
Self-propelled particles possessing permanent magnetic dipole moments occur naturally in magnetotactic bacteria and in man-made systems like active colloids or micro-robots. Yet, the interplay between self-propulsion and anisotropic…
External fields can decidedly alter the free energy landscape of soft materials and can be exploited as a powerful tool for the assembly of targeted nanostructures and colloidal materials. Here, we use computer simulations to demonstrate…
Active nematics are out-of-equilibrium systems in which energy injection at the microscale drives emergent collective behaviors, from spontaneous flows to active turbulence. While the dynamics of these systems have been extensively studied,…
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…
Power-law dwell times have been observed for molecular motors in living cells, but the origins of these trapped states are not known. We introduce a minimal model of motors moving on a two-dimensional network of filaments, and simulations…
We develop an effective two-dimensional coarse-grained description for the coupled system of a planar fluid membrane anchored to a thin layer of polar ordered active fluid below. The macroscopic orientation of the active fluid layer is…
In living cells, molecular motors create activity that enhances the diffusion of particles throughout the cytoplasm, and not just ones attached to the motors. We demonstrate initial steps toward creating artificial cells that mimic this…
Inspired by experiments on dynamic extensile gels of biofilaments and motors, we propose a model of a network of linear springs with a kinetics consisting of growth at a prescribed rate, death after a lifetime drawn from a distribution, and…
A constitutive relation between stress and strain relative to a reference state is the basic assumption of elasticity theory. However, in living matter, force generation is governed by motor molecule activity, which does not depend on…
We show that hydrodynamic turbulent cloud simulations naturally produce large filaments made up of a network of smaller and coherent sub-filaments. Such simulations resemble observations of filaments and fibres in nearby molecular clouds.…
Filamentary structures are often identified in column density maps of molecular clouds, and appear to be important for both low- and high-mass star formation. Theoretically, these structures are expected to form in regions where the…
By means of molecular dynamics, we study the structure and the dynamics of a microscopic model for colloidal gels at low volume fractions. The presence of directional interactions leads to the formation of a persistent interconnected…
Colloidal gels are prime examples of functional materials exhibiting disordered, amorphous, yet meta-stable forms. They maintain stability through short-range attractive forces and their material properties are tunable by external forces.…
Mechanical properties of disordered materials are governed by their underlying free energy landscape. In contrast to external fields, embedding a small fraction of active particles within a disordered material generates non-equilibrium…
Anomalously slow passive diffusion, $\langle \delta x^2(t)\rangle\simeq t^{\alpha}$, with $0<\alpha<1$, of larger tracers such as messenger RNA and endogenous submicron granules in the cytoplasm of living biological cells has been…
Dense active matter, from bacterial suspensions and microtubule bundles driven by motor proteins to cellular monolayers and synthetic Janus particles, is characterised by mesoscale turbulence, the emergence of chaotic flow structures. By…