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The study of liquid crystals at equilibrium has led to fundamental insights into the nature of ordered materials, as well as to practical applications such as display technologies. Active nematics are a fundamentally different class of…
Active forces occurring within cells can drive crucial biological processes that involve spontaneous organization and shape change, such as cell division. Motivated by recent in vitro experiments of nematic droplets of cytoskeletal…
We develop a formal analogy between configurational stresses in two distinct physical systems, and study the flows that they induce when the configurations of interest include topological de- fects. The two systems in question are…
Kinesin motors have been studied extensively both experimentally and theoretically. However, the microscopic mechanism of the processive movement of kinesin is still an open question. In this paper, we propose a hand-over-hand model for the…
Active nematics in two dimensions stir themselves efficiently through internally generated chaotic flows, largely driven by motile $+1/2$ disclinations. We investigate how this tendency toward chaotic fluid stirring can, counterintuitively,…
We have proposed the neck linker swing model to investigate the mechanism of mechanochemical coupling of kinesin. The Michaelis-Menten-like curve for velocity vs ATP concentration at different loads has been obtained, which is in agreement…
Point-like motile topological defects control the universal dynamics of diverse two-dimensional active nematics ranging from shaken granular rods to cellular monolayers. A comparable understanding in higher dimensions has yet to emerge. We…
Kinesins are processive motor proteins that move along microtubules in a stepwise manner, and their motion is powered by the hydrolysis of ATP. Recent experiments have investigated the coupling between the individual steps of single kinesin…
Molecular motors of the kinesin-1 family move in a directed and processive fashion along microtubules (MTs). It is generally accepted that steric hindrance of motors leads to crowding effects; however, little is known about the specific…
We present experimental and theoretical studies of the dynamics of molecular motors in microtubule arrays and asters. By solving a convection-diffusion equation we find that the density profile of motors in a two-dimensional aster is…
Starting from a three-dimensional description of an active nematic layer, we employ an asymptotic theory to derive a series of low-dimensional continuum models that capture the coupled dynamics of flat and curved films, including variations…
Incorporating the inherent heterogeneity of living systems into models of active nematics is essential to provide a more realistic description of biological processes such as bacterial growth, cell dynamics and tissue development.…
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.…
A paradigm for internally driven matter is the active nematic liquid crystal, whereby the equations of a conventional nematic are supplemented by a minimal active stress that violates time reversal symmetry. In practice, active fluids may…
Active matter embraces systems that self-organize at different length and time scales, often exhibiting turbulent flows. Here, we use a quasi-two-dimensional nematically ordered layer of a protein-based active gel to experimentally…
In this work we present the first systematic framework to sculpt active nematics systems, using optimal control theory and a hydrodynamic model of active nematics. We demonstrate the use of two different control fields, (1) applied…
Confined active nematics exhibit rich dynamical behavior, including spontaneous flows, periodic defect dynamics, and chaotic `active turbulence'. Here, we study these phenomena using the framework of Exact Coherent Structures, which has…
We report hybrid lattice Boltzmann (HLB) simulations of the hydrodynamics of an active nematic liquid crystal sandwiched between confining walls with various anchoring conditions. We confirm the existence of a transition between a passive…
We study how confinement transforms the chaotic dynamics of bulk microtubule-based active nematics into regular spatiotemporal patterns. For weak confinements, multiple continuously nucleating and annihilating topological defects…
We consider the dynamics of active nematics droplets on flat surfaces, based on the continuum hydrodynamic theory. We investigate a wide range of dynamical regimes as a function of the activity and droplet size on surfaces characterized by…