Related papers: Microtubule-based active fluids with improved life…
We study a three-dimensional, incompressible, viscous, micropolar fluid with anisotropic microstructure on a periodic domain. Subject to a uniform microtorque, this system admits a unique nontrivial equilibrium. We prove that when the…
Length-regulation of microtubules (MTs) is essential for many cellular processes. Molecular motors like kinesin 8, which move along MTs and also act as depolymerases, are known as key players in MT dynamics. However, the regulatory…
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…
The topological properties of many materials are central to their behavior, with the dynamics of topological defects being particularly important to intrinsically out-of-equilibrium, active materials. In this paper, local manipulation of…
Incorporating cells within active biomaterial scaffolds is a promising strategy to develop forefront materials that can autonomously sense, respond, and alter the scaffold in response to environmental cues or internal cell circuitry. Using…
Analytical formulas for effective drift, diffusivity, run times, and run lengths are derived for an intracellular transport system consisting of a cargo attached to two cooperative but not identical molecular motors (for example, kinesin-1…
Essentially all biology is active and dynamic. Biological entities autonomously sense, com- pute, and respond using energy-coupled ratchets that can produce force and do work. The cytoskeleton, along with its associated proteins and motors,…
Materials made from active, living, or robotic components can display emergent properties arising from local sensing and computation. Here, we realize a freestanding active metabeam with piezoelectric elements and electronic feed-forward…
The dynamics of a membrane coupled to an active fluid on top of a substrate is considered theoretically. It is assumed that the director field of the active fluid has rotational symmetry in the membrane plane. This situation is likely to be…
Microorganisms living in microfluidic environments often form multi-species swarms, where they can leverage collective motions to achieve enhanced transport and spreading. Nevertheless, there is a general lack of physical understandings of…
Active nematics are materials composed of mobile, elongated particles that can transform energy from the environment into a mechanical motion. Current experimental realizations of the active nematics are of biological origin and include…
Long-distance bidirectional transport of organelles depends on the motor proteins kinesin and dynein. Using quantitative data obtained from a fungal model system, we previously developed ASEP-models of bidirectional motion of motors along…
The cytoskeleton is an important subsystem of cells that is involved for example in cell division and locomotion. It consists of filaments that are cross-linked by molecular motors that can induce relative sliding between filaments and…
Aging populations and the rising prevalence of neurological and musculoskeletal disorders increase the demand for wearable mobility assistive devices that are effective, comfortable, and anatomically compatible. Many existing systems use…
Biological microswimmers often encounter deformable boundaries in physiological conditions; for instance, the viscoelastic walls of reproductive tract during migration of spermatozoa, or host tissue during early bacterial biofilm formation.…
Membrane tubes are important elements for living cells to organize many functions. Experiments have found that membrane tube can be extracted from giant lipid vesicles by a group of kinesin. How these motors cooperate in extracting the…
We present a continuum level analytical model of a droplet of active contractile fluid consisting of filaments and motors. We calculate the steady state flows that result from a splayed polarisation of the filaments. We account for the…
Collective motion of self-propelled organisms or synthetic particles often termed active fluid has attracted enormous attention in broad scientific community because of it fundamentally non-equilibrium nature. Energy input and interactions…
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…
Inspired by patterns observed in mixtures of microtubules and molecular motors, we propose continuum equations for the evolution of motor density, and microtubule orientation. The chief ingredients are the transport of motors along tubules,…