Related papers: Collective beating of artificial microcilia
In active matter systems, self-propelled particles can self-organize to undergo collective motion, leading to persistent dynamical behavior out of equilibrium. In cells, cytoskeletal filaments and motor proteins self-organize into complex…
Single and collective cellular oscillations involving the actomyosin cytoskeleton have been observed in numerous biological systems. We show here that a generic model of a contractile material, which is turning over and contracts against an…
Motile cilia beat in an asymmetric fashion in order to propel the surrounding fluid. When many cilia are located on a surface, their beating can synchronise such that their phases form metachronal waves. Here, we computationally study a…
Motile cilia are a striking example of functional cellular organelle, conserved across all the eukaryotic species. Motile cilia allow swimming of cells and small organisms and transport of liquids across epithelial tissues. Whilst the…
Large arrays of active cilia coordinate their beat cycles into metachronal waves. These waves can travel in different directions with respect to the cilium's beat direction and the resulting direction of fluid propulsion. Hydrodynamic…
Biological systems are robust to perturbations at both the genetic and environmental levels. Yet, these same perturbations can elicit variation in behavior. The interplay between functional robustness and behavioral variability is…
Spherical cellular aggregates are in vitro systems to study the physical and biophysical properties of tissues. We present a novel approach to characterize the mechanical properties of cellular aggregates using micropipette aspiration…
Ciliated tissues such as in the mammalian lungs, brains, and reproductive tracts, are specialized to pump fluid. They generate flows by the collective activity of hundreds of thousands of individual cilia that beat in a striking metachronal…
We study a slender filament beating in a viscous fluid with novel curvature-dependent bending stiffness. Our numerical and experimental investigations reveal that such differential stiffness can sustain planar bending waves far along…
Motivated by recent simulations and by experiments on aggregation of gliding bacteria, we study a model of the collective dynamics of self-propelled hard rods on a substrate in two dimensions. The rods have finite size, interact via…
Collections of simple, self-propelled colloidal particles exhibit complex, emergent dynamical behavior, with promising applications in microrobotics. When confined within a deformable vesicle, self-propelled rods cluster and align,…
Propelling microorganisms through fluids and moving fluids along cellular surfaces are essential biological functions accomplished by long, thin structures called motile cilia and flagella, whose regular, oscillatory beating breaks the…
Motile cilia are slender, hair-like cellular appendages that spontaneously oscillate under the action of internal molecular motors and are typically found in dense arrays. These active filaments coordinate their beating to generate…
Self organization mechanisms are essential for the cytoskeleton to adapt to the requirements of living cells. They rely on the intricate interplay of cytoskeletal filaments, crosslinking proteins and molecular motors. Here we present an in…
Asymmetries and anisotropies are widespread in biological systems, including in the structure and dynamics of cilia and eukaryotic flagella. These microscopic, hair-like appendages exhibit asymmetric beating patterns that break…
Networks of biofilaments are essential for the formation of cellular structures that support various biological functions. For the most part, previous studies have investigated the collective dynamics of rod-like biofilaments; however, the…
A variety of swimming microorganisms, called ciliates, exploit the bending of a large number of small and densely-packed organelles, termed cilia, in order to propel themselves in a viscous fluid. We consider a spherical envelope model for…
Bacteria can spontaneously develop collective motions by aligning their motions in dense systems. Here, we show that bacteria can also respond collectively to an alternating electrical field and form dynamic clusters oscillating at the same…
Active colloids are microscopic particles, which self-propel through viscous fluids by converting energy extracted from their environment into directed motion. We first explain how articial microswimmers move forward by generating…
In this review article, we focus on collective motion in externally driven colloidal suspensions, as well as how these collective effects can be harnessed for use in microfluidic applications. We highlight the leading role of hydrodynamic…