Related papers: Microtubule-based active fluids with improved life…
Active matter, exemplified by adaptive living materials such as the actomyosin cytoskeleton, can navigate material parameter space dynamically, leading to unconventional mechanical responses. In particular, it can self-drive toward elastic…
Active materials are capable of converting free energy into mechanical work to produce autonomous motion, and exhibit striking collective dynamics that biology relies on for essential functions. Controlling those dynamics and transport in…
Microtubules self-organize to form part of the cellular cytoskeleton. They give cells their shape and play a crucial role in cell division and intracellular transport. Strikingly, microtubules driven by motor proteins reorganize into stable…
Understanding the mechanical properties of active suspensions is crucial for their potential applications in materials engineering. Among the various phenomena in active matter that have no analogue in equilibrium systems, motility-induced…
Thin liquid films with floating active protein machines are considered. Cyclic mechanical motions within the machines, representing microscopic swimmers, lead to molecular propulsion forces applied to the air-liquid interface. We show that,…
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…
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…
In active matter systems, self-propelled particles can self-organize to undergo collective motion, leading to persistent dynamical behavior out of equilibrium. In cells, cytoskeletal filaments and motor proteins self-organize into complex…
Active nematic systems consist of rod-like internally driven subunits that interact with one another to form large-scale coherent flows. They are important examples of far-from-equilibrium fluids, which exhibit a wealth of nonlinear…
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…
Cells control the size and organization of biomolecular condensates formed by liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS), but multiple mechanisms likely contribute to this control and remain to be fully elucidated. Here we propose a…
In the present paper we describe a model of nonlinear dynamics of microtubules (MT) assuming a single longitudinal degree of freedom per tubulin dimer. This is a longitudinal displacement of a dimer at a certain position with respect to the…
The microtubule cytoskeleton is responsible for sustained, long-range intracellular transport of mRNAs, proteins, and organelles in neurons. Neuronal microtubules must be stable enough to ensure reliable transport, but they also undergo…
We present a derivation from first principles of the coupled equations of motion of an active self-diffusiophoretic Janus motor and the hydrodynamic densities of its fluid environment that are nonlinearly displaced from equilibrium. The…
We introduce a mesoscopic three-dimensional Lattice Boltzmann Model which attempts to mimick the physical features associated with cage effects in dynamically heterogeneous fluids. To this purpose, we extend the standard Lattice Boltzmann…
We propose a two-dimensional model for the organization of stabilized microtubules driven by molecular motors in an unconfined geometry. In this model two kinds of dynamics are competing. The first one is purely diffusive, with an…
Soft solids with tunable mechanical response are at the core of new material technologies, but a crucial limit for applications is their progressive aging over time, which dramatically affects their functionalities. The generally accepted…
Fluids with internal microstructure like dense suspensions, biological and polymer added fluids, are commonly found in the turbulent regime in many applications. Their flow is extremely difficult to be studied as microstructure complexity…
Active gel theory has recently been very successful in describing biologically active materials such as actin filaments or moving bacteria in temporally fixed and simple geometries such as cubes or spheres. Here we develop a computational…
Active systems contain self-propelled particles and can spontaneously self-organize into patterns making them attractive candidates for the self-assembly of smart soft materials. One key limitation of our present understanding of these…