Related papers: Collective beating of artificial microcilia
Filamentous cyanobacteria can show fascinating examples of nonequilibrium self-organization, which however are not well-understood from a physical perspective. We investigate the motility and collective organization of colonies of these…
Collective motion is often modeled within the framework of active fluids, where the constituent active particles, when interactions with other particles are switched off, perform normal diffusion at long times. However, in biology,…
In equilibrium, the physical properties of matter are set by the interactions between the constituents. In contrast, the energy input of the individual components controls the behavior of synthetic or living active matter. Great progress…
Spontaneous directed motion, a hallmark of cell biology, is unusual in classical statistical physics. Here we study, using both numerical and analytical methods, organized motion in models of the cytoskeleton in which constituents are…
The composite cytoskeleton, comprising interacting networks of semiflexible actin and rigid microtubules, actively generates forces and restructures using motor proteins such as myosins to enable key mechanical processes including cell…
Living systems continuously sense, integrate, and act on chemical information using multiscale biochemical networks whose dynamics are inherently nonlinear, adaptive, and energy-efficient. Yet, most attempts to harness such "wetware" for…
Active processes drive and guide biological dynamics across scales -- from subcellular cytoskeletal remodelling, through tissue development in embryogenesis, to population-level bacterial colonies expansion. In each of these, biological…
We investigate the collective dynamics of self-propelled droplets, confined in a one dimensional micro-fluidic channel. On one hand, neighboring droplets align and form large trains of droplets moving in the same direction. On the other…
Microorganisms develop coordinated beating patterns on surfaces lined with cilia known as metachronal waves. For a chain of cilia attached to a flat ciliate, it has been shown that hydrodynamic interactions alone can lead the system to…
Collective oscillation of cells in a population has been reported under diverse biological contexts and with vastly different molecular constructs. Could there be common principles similar to those that govern spontaneous oscillation in…
We have proposed a method for the dynamic simulation of a collection of self-propelled particles in a viscous Newtonian fluid. We restrict attention to particles whose size and velocity are small enough that the fluid motion is in the…
We report experimental evidence of the route to spatiotemporal chaos in a large 1D-array of hotspots in a thermoconvective system. Increasing the driving force, a stationary cellular pattern becomes unstable towards a mixed pattern of…
Microscopic active droplets are able to swim autonomously in viscous flows: this puzzling feature stems from solute exchanges with the surrounding fluid via surface reactions or their spontaneous solubilisation, and the interfacial flows…
Motility is a basic feature of living microorganisms, and how it works is often determined by environmental cues. Recent efforts have focused on develop- ing artificial systems that can mimic microorganisms, and in particular their…
The giant single-celled slime mould Physarum polycephalum exhibits complex morphological adaptation and amoeboid movement as it forages for food and may be seen as a minimal example of complex robotic behaviour. Swarm computation has…
Many fascinating phenomena such as large-scale collective flows, enhanced fluid mixing and pattern formation have been observed in so-called active fluids, which are composed of particles that can absorb energy and dissipate it into the…
We investigate regular configurations of a small number of particles settling under gravity in a viscous fluid. The particles do not touch each other and can move relative to each other. The dynamics is analyzed in the point-particle…
Growing living cultures of Escherichia coli bacteria were investigated using real-time in situ rheology and rheo-imaging measurements. In the early stages of growth (lag phase), and when subjected to a constant stationary shear, the…
In this work we mimic the efficient propulsion mechanism of natural cilia by magnetically actuating thin films in a cyclic but non-reciprocating manner. By simultaneously solving the elasto-dynamic, magnetostatic and fluid mechanics…
This article reviews recent research on the collective dynamical behavior of colloids with dipolar or multipolar interactions. Indeed, whereas equilibrium structures and static self-assembly of such systems are now rather well understood,…