Related papers: Stress reorganisation and response in active solid…
Actomyosin networks are major structural components of the cell. They provide mechanical integrity and allow dynamic remodeling of eukaryotic cells, self-organizing into the diverse patterns essential for development. We provide a…
The interplay between active matter and its environment is central to understanding emergent behavior in biological and synthetic systems. Here, we show that coupling active nematic flows to small-amplitude deformations of a compliant…
The self-organization of active particles is governed by their dynamic effective interactions. Such interactions are controlled by the medium in which such active agents reside. Here, we study the interactions between active agents in a…
Active stresses in biological cells and tissues drive many developmental processes. However, increasing experimental evidence suggests that additional mechanical interactions with surrounding material can play a crucial role in guiding…
Many organisms have an elastic skeleton that consists of a closed shell of epithelial cells that is filled with fluid, and can actively regulate both elastic forces in the shell and hydrostatic pressure inside it. In this work we introduce…
The actin cytoskeleton is an active semi-flexible polymer network whose non-equilibrium properties coordinate both stable and contractile behaviors to maintain or change cell shape. While myosin motors drive the actin cytoskeleton…
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 present a generic theory for the dynamics of a stiff filament under tension, in an active medium with orientational correlations, such as a microtubule in contractile actin. In sharp contrast to the case of a passive medium, we find the…
Actin and myosin drive many instances of force generation, deformation, and shape change in cells, tissues, and organisms. In particular, cytoskeletal actomyosin is remarkable in its adaptive architecture, responding to a host of…
Many types of mammalian cells exert active contractile forces and mechanically deform their elastic substrate, to accomplish biological functions such as cell migration. These substrate deformations provide a mechanism by which cells can…
We construct a homogeneous, nonlinear elastic constitutive law, that models aspects of the mechanical behavior of inhomogeneous fibrin networks. Fibers in such networks buckle when in compression. We model this as a loss of stiffness in…
Like emulsions, pastes and many other forms of soft condensed matter, aqueous foams present slow mechanical relaxations when subjected to a stress too small to induce any plastic flow. To identify the physical origin of this viscoelastic…
Tuning of active prestress e.g. through activity of molecular motors constitutes a powerful cellular tool to adjust cellular stiffness through nonlinear material properties. Understanding this tool is an important prerequisite for our…
In vivo and in vitro systems of cells and extra-cellular matrix (ECM) systems are well known to form ordered patterns of orientationally aligned fibers. Here, we interpret them as active analogs of the (disordered) isotropic to the…
We develop an energy-landscape based elasto-plastic model to understand the behaviour of amorphous solids under uniform and cyclic shear. Amorphous solids are modeled as being composed of mesoscopic sub-volumes, each of which may occupy…
Granular materials are ubiquitous in nature and are used extensively in daily life and in industry. The modeling of these materials remains challenging; therefore, finding models with acceptable predictive accuracy that at the same time…
Many biological processes involve the action of molecular motors that interact with the cell cytoskeleton. Some processes, such as the transport of cargoes is achieved mainly by the action of individual motors. Other, such as cell motility…
Cells accomplish diverse functions using the same molecular building blocks, from setting up cytoplasmic flows to generating mechanical forces. In particular, transitions between these non-equilibrium states are triggered by regulating the…
Disordered soft materials, such as fibrous networks in biological contexts exhibit a nonlinear elastic response. We study such nonlinear behavior with a minimal model for networks on lattice geometries with simple Hookian elements with…
We propose a class of microstructurally informed models for the linear elastic mechanical behavior of cross-linked polymer networks such as the actin cytoskeleton. Salient features of the models include the possibility to represent…