Related papers: Living Liquid Crystals
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…
Many active biological particles, such as swimming microorganisms or motor-proteins, do work on their environment by going though a periodic sequence of shapes. Interactions between particles can lead to the phase-synchronization of their…
Bacteria suspension exhibits a wide range of collective phenomena arising from interactions between individual cells. Here we show Serratia marcescens cells near an air-liquid interface spontaneously aggregate into dynamic clusters through…
Biological tissues exhibit complex behaviors with their dynamics often resembling inert soft matter such as liquids, polymers, colloids, and liquid crystals. These analogies enable physics-based approaches for investigations of emergent…
Soft materials such as colloidal suspensions, polymer solutions and liquid crystals are constituted by mesoscopic entities held together by weak forces. Their mechanical moduli are several orders of magnitude lower than those of atomic…
Electrically-controlled dynamics of fluids and particles at microscales is a fascinating area of research with applications ranging from microfluidics and sensing to sorting of biomolecules. The driving mechanisms are electric forces acting…
Many bacteria live in natural and clinical environments with abundant macromolecular polymers. Macromolecular fluids commonly display viscoelasticity and non-Newtonian rheological behavior; it is unclear how these complex-fluid properties…
The last decade has witnessed a rapid growth in understanding of the pivotal roles of mechanical stresses and physical forces in cell biology. As a result an integrated view of cell biology is evolving, where genetic and molecular features…
We introduce a system of bacteria confined to a finite 2D oil-water interface and driven on two distinct time scales by motility and by growth. The combined effect of activity on different time scales creates transitions between several…
We investigate theoretically the collective dynamics of soft active particles living in a viscous fluid. We focus on a minimal model for active but non-motile particles consisting of $N>1$ elastic dimers deformed by active stresses and…
Motivated by the experimental ability to produce monodisperse particles in microfluidic devices, we study theoretically the hydrodynamic stability of driven and active crystals. We first recall the theoretical tools allowing to quantify the…
Artificial soft matter systems have appeared as important tools to harness mechanical motion for microscale manipulation. Typically, this motion is driven either by the external fields or by mutual interaction between the colloids. In the…
Despite the diversity of materials designated as active matter, virtually all active systems undergo a form of dynamic arrest when crowding and activity compete, reminiscent of the dynamic arrest observed in colloidal and molecular fluids…
Bulk properties of ionic liquid crystals are investigated using density functional theory. The liquid crystal molecules are represented by ellipsoidal particles with charges located in their center or at their tails. Attractive interactions…
Active matter consists of units that generate mechanical work by consuming energy. Examples include living systems, such as assemblies of bacteria and biological tissues, biopolymers driven by molecular motors, and suspensions of synthetic…
We investigate the effects of bacterial activity on the mixing and transport properties of a passive scalar in time-periodic flows in experiments and in a simple model. We focus on the interactions between swimming E. coli and the…
Cell motility in viscous fluids is ubiquitous and affects many biological processes, including reproduction, infection, and the marine life ecosystem. Here we review the biophysical and mechanical principles of locomotion at the small…
Concentrated suspensions of swimming microorganisms and other forms of active matter are known to display complex, self-organized spatio-temporal patterns on scales large compared to those of the individual motile units. Despite intensive…
When we lower the temperature of a liquid, at some point we meet a first order phase transition to the crystal. Yet, under certain conditions it is possible to keep the system in its metastable phase and to avoid crystallization. In this…
Motile bacteria are a wonder of nature's engineering: microscopic engines that transduce biochemical energy into the work they require to explore their environment. This added energy turns the surrounding fluid into a bath that departs from…