Related papers: Spontaneous division and motility in active nemati…

Recent studies have shown that packings of cells, both eukaryotic cellular tissues and growing or swarming bacterial colonies, can often be understood as active nematic fluids. A key property of volume-conserving active nematic model…

Cell alignment often forms nematic order, which can lead to anomalous collective cell flow due to the so-called active force. Although it is appreciated that cell migration is driven by traction force, a quantitative evaluation of the…

The multi-cellular hydrodynamic interactions play a critical role in the phenomenology of blood flow in the microcirculation. A fast algorithm has been developed to simulate large numbers of cells modeled as elastic thin membranes. For red…

We experimentally investigate the dynamics of synthetic active particles composed of gravitationally bouncing, superwalking droplets confined within an annular fluid bath. Driven by a topologically pumping dual-frequency waveform, the…

The field of active matter, and particularly active emulsions, is growing rapidly, with significant progress made recently on both theoretical and experimental fronts. Here, we summarize experimental research progress related to active…

Many active fluid systems encountered in biology are set in total geometric confinement. Cytoplasmic streaming in plant cells is a prominent and ubiquitous example, in which cargo-carrying molecular motors move along polymer filaments and…

Active matter consumes energy from the environment and transforms it into mechanical work. Notable examples from biology include cell division, bacterial swarms, and muscle contraction. In this work, we investigate the nature of active…

In vitro epithelial monolayers exhibit a rich repertoire of collective dynamical behaviours according to microenvironment mechanical features. We investigate the statistical and dynamical properties of human bronchial epithelial cell (HBEC)…

To explore and react to their environment, living micro-swimmers have developed sophisticated strategies for locomotion - in particular, motility with multiple gaits. To understand the physical principles associated with such a behavioural…

I put forward a continuum theory for active nematic gels, defined as fluids or suspensions of orientable rodlike objects endowed with active dynamics, that is based on symmetry arguments and compatibility with thermodynamics. The starting…

Active fluids display spontaneous turbulent-like flows known as active turbulence. Recent work revealed that these flows have universal features, independent of the material properties and of the presence of topological defects. However,…

We study colloidal particles in a nematic-liquid-crystal-filled microfluidic channel and show how elastic interactions between the particle and the channel wall lead to different particle dynamics compared with conventional microfluidics.…

Active particles contain internal degrees of freedom with the ability to take in and dissipate energy and, in the process, execute systematic movement. Examples include all living organisms and their motile constituents such as molecular…

We adapt the Halperin-Mazenko formalism to analyze two-dimensional active nematics coupled to a generic fluid flow. The governing hydrodynamic equations lead to evolution laws for nematic topological defects and their corresponding density…

When a volatile droplet is deposited on a floating swellable sheet, it becomes asymmetric, lobed and mobile. We describe and quantify this phenomena that involves nonequilibrium swelling, evaporation and motion, working together to realize…

Living systems are capable of locomotion, reconfiguration, and replication. To perform these tasks, cells spatiotemporally coordinate the interactions of force-generating, "active" molecules that create and manipulate non-equilibrium…

We explore a generic mechanism whereby a droplet of active matter acquires motility by the spontaneous breakdown of a discrete symmetry. The model we study offers a simple representation of a "cell extract" comprising, e.g., a droplet of…

We use a two-fluid model to study a confined mixture of an active nematic fluid and a passive isotropic fluid. We find that an extensile active fluid preferentially accumulates at a boundary if the anchoring is planar, whereas its boundary…

We develop a minimal hydrodynamic model, without an orientational order parameter, for assemblies of contractile swimmers encapsulated in a droplet of a binary-fluid emulsion. Our model uses two coupled scalar order parameters, $\phi$ and…

The hydrodynamic theory of active nematics has been often used to describe the spatio-temporal dynamics of cell flows and motile topological defects within soft confluent tissues. Those theories, however, often rely on the assumption that…