Related papers: Collective dynamics of active filament complexes
Collective cell motions underlie structure formation during embryonic development. Tissues exhibit emergent multicellular characteristics such as jamming, rigidity transitions, and glassy dynamics, but there remain questions about how those…
Collective migration -- the directed, coordinated motion of many self-propelled agents -- is a fascinating emergent behavior exhibited by active matter that has key functional implications for biological systems. Extensive studies have…
We consider a three-dimensional network of aqueous droplets joined by single lipid bilayers to form a cohesive, tissue-like material. The droplets in these networks can be programmed to have distinct osmolarities so that osmotic gradients…
We investigate the dynamics of an active particle in two-dimensional spherical crystals, which provide an ideal environment to illustrate the interplay of active particle and crystallographic defects. A moving active particle is observed to…
A wide range of experimental systems including gliding, swarming and swimming bacteria, in-vitro motility assays as well as shaken granular media are commonly described as self-propelled rods. Large ensembles of those entities display a…
The creation of synthetic systems that emulate the defining properties of living matter, such as motility, gradient-sensing, signalling and replication, is a grand challenge of biomimetics. Such imitations of life crucially contain active…
Soft slender structures are ubiquitous in natural and artificial systems and can be observed at scales that range from the nanometric to the kilometric, from polymers to space tethers. We present a practical numerical approach to simulate…
Many active systems are capable of forming intriguing patterns at scales significantly larger than the size of their individual constituents. Cyanobacteria are one of the most ancient and important phyla of organisms that has allowed the…
A number of biological processes, such as embryo development, cancer metastasis or wound healing, rely on cells moving in concert. The mechanisms leading to the emergence of coordinated motion remain however largely unexplored. Although…
Living materials such as membranes, cytoskeletal assemblies, cell collectives and tissues can often be described as active solids -- materials that are energized from within, with elastic response about a well defined reference…
The collective motion of epithelial cells is a fundamental biological process which plays a significant role in embryogenesis, wound healing and tumor metastasis. While it has been broadly investigated for over a decade both in vivo and in…
We use Brownian dynamics simulations and theory to study the over-damped spatiotemporal dynamics and pattern formation in a fluid-permeated array of equally spaced, active, elastic filaments that are pinned at one end and free at the other.…
We study a simple two-dimensional model for motion of an elastic filament subject to internally generated stresses and show that wave-like propagating shapes which can propel the filament can be induced by a self-organized mechanism via a…
We have adapted classical molecular dynamics to study the structural and dynamical properties of amorphous silica surfaces. Concerning the structure, the density profile exhibits oscillations perpendicularly to the surface as observed in…
The classical picture of a star-forming filament is a near-equilibrium structure, with collapse dependent on its gravitational criticality. Recent observations have complicated this picture, revealing filaments as a mess of apparently…
Topological defects play a central role in the formation and organization of various biological systems. Historically, such nonequilibrium defects have been mainly studied in the context of homogeneous active nematics. Phase-separated…
A collection of rings made of active Brownian particles (ABPs) for different packing fractions and activities is investigated using computer simulations. We show that active rings display an emergent dynamic clustering instead of the…
Collective cell migration in 3D extracellular matrix (ECM) is crucial to many physiological and pathological processes. Migrating cells can generate active pulling forces via actin filament contraction, which are transmitted to the ECM…
Active matter agents consume internal energy or extract energy from the environment for locomotion and force generation. Already rather generic models, such as ensembles of active Brownian particles, exhibit phenomena, which are absent at…
Many types of motile cells perform durotaxis, namely, directed migration following gradients of substrate stiffness. Recent experiments have revealed that cell monolayers can migrate toward stiffer regions even when individual cells do not…