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The importance of individual cells in a developing multicellular organism is well known but precisely how the individual cellular characteristics of those cells collectively drive the emergence of robust, homeostatic structures is less well…
We reveal that the mechanical pulsation of locally synchronised particles is a generic route to propagate deformation waves. We consider a model of dense repulsive particles whose activity drives periodic change in size of each individual.…
Non-equilibrium processes which convert chemical energy into mechanical motion enable the motility of organisms. Bundles of inextensible filaments driven by energy transduction of molecular motors form essential components of micron-scale…
Biological cells are able to adapt their behaviour in response to environmental cues. Durotaxis is a phenomenon in which cells adjust their migration depending on the mechanical properties of a surrounding substrate. Although durotaxis has…
Regulation to a well-defined target state is a fundamental requirement for achieving reliable functionality in living systems and maintaining specific non-equilibrium states. The control of certain properties and functionalities of systems…
A living cell actively generates traction forces on its environment with its actin cytoskeleton. These forces deform the cell elastic substrate which, in turn, affects the traction forces exerted by the cell and can consequently modify the…
We investigate how light polarization affects the motion of photo-responsive algae, \textit{Euglena gracilis}. In a uniformly polarized field, cells swim approximately perpendicular to the polarization direction and form a nematic state…
Cell motility is fundamental to many biological processes, and cells exhibit a variety of migration patterns. Many motile cell types follow a universal law that connects their speed and persistency, a property that can originate from the…
The organization of cells within tissues plays a vital role in various biological processes, including development and morphogenesis. As a result, understanding how cells self-organize in tissues has been an active area of research. In our…
The chemotaxis pathway in the bacterium Escherichia coli allows cells to detect changes in external ligand concentration (e.g. nutrients). The pathway regulates the flagellated rotary motors and hence the cells' swimming behaviour, steering…
The clarification of the motion alignment mechanism in collective cell migration is an important issue commonly in physics and biology. In analogy with the self-propelled disk, the polarity memory effect of eukaryotic cell is a fundamental…
Mechanical cues from the extracellular microenvironment play a central role in regulating the structure, function and fate of living cells. Nevertheless, the precise nature of the mechanisms and processes underlying this crucial cellular…
How can a collection of motile cells, each generating contractile nematic stresses in isolation, become an extensile nematic at the tissue-level? Understanding this seemingly contradictory experimental observation, which occurs irrespective…
The rotation of polarization occurs for light interacting with chiral materials. It requires the light states with opposite chiralities interact differently with the materials. We demonstrate analogous rotation of polarization also exists…
Activity and renewability are distinctive features of living matter, and constitute a new class of materials that we term renewable active matter. A striking example is the cell cytoskeleton, where myosin filaments bind to the actin…
Many animal cells change their shape depending on the stiffness of the substrate on which they are cultured: they assume small, rounded shapes in soft ECMs, they elongate within stiffer ECMs, and flatten out on hard substrates. Cells tend…
Cell polarity refers to the spatial asymmetry of molecules on the cell membrane. Altschuler, Angenent, Wang and Wu have proposed a stochastic model for studying the emergence of polarity in the presence of feedback between molecules. We…
We introduce a generic, purely mechanical model for environment sensitive motion of mammalian cells that is applicable to chemotaxis, haptotaxis, and durotaxis as modes of motility. It is able to theoretically explain all relevant…
We study the clustering of a model cyanobacterium \textit{Synechocystis} into microcolonies. The bacteria are allowed to diffuse onto surfaces of different hardness, and interact with the others by aggregation and detachment. We find that…
A number of microorganisms leave persistent trails while moving along surfaces. For single-cell organisms, the trail-mediated self-interaction will influence its dynamics. It has been discussed recently [Kranz \textit{et al.} Phys. Rev.…