Related papers: Multiscale Microtubule Dynamics in Active Nematics
The cytoskeleton is regulated by a plethora of enzymes that influence the stability and dynamics of cytoskeletal filaments. Molecular motors of the kinesin-8 protein family depolymerise microtubules in a length-dependent manner, and…
Real-life bacteria often swim in complex fluids, but our understanding of the interactions between bacteria and complex surroundings is still evolving. In this work, rod-like \textit{Bacillus subtilis} swims in a quasi-2D environment with…
Non-motile elongated bacteria confined in two-dimensional open micro-channels can exhibit collective motion and form dense monolayers with nematic order if the cells proliferate, i.e., grow and divide. Using soft molecular dynamics…
Active matter comprised of self-propelled interacting units holds a major promise for extraction of useful work from its seemingly chaotic out-of-equilibrium dynamics. Streamlining active matter to produce work is especially important at…
Active fluids, such as cytoskeletal filaments, bacterial colonies and epithelial cell layers, exhibit distinctive orientational coherence, often characterized by nematic order and topological defects. By contrast, little is known about…
A propagating "beam" triggering a local phase transition in a nematic elastomer sets it into a crawling motion, which may morph due to buckling. We consider the motion of the various configurations of slender rods and thin stripes with both…
Long, elastic filaments cross-linked and deformed by active molecular motors occur in various natural settings. The overall macroscopic mechanical response of such a composite network depends on the coupling between the active and the…
Colloidal inclusions in nematic fluids induce topological defects that govern their dynamics. These defects create well-understood rheological behavior in passive nematics, but the interplay between colloid-associated defects and…
Most cells possess the capacity to locomote. Alone or collectively, this allows them to adapt, to rearrange, and to explore their surroundings. The biophysical characterization of such motile processes, in health and disease, has so far…
Two-dimensional nonequilibrium nematic steady states, as found in agitated granular-rod monolayers or films of orientable amoeboid cells, were predicted [Europhys. Lett. {\bf 62} (2003) 196] to have giant number fluctuations, with standard…
Adding a small amount of passive (Brownian) particles to a two-dimensional dense suspension of repulsive active Brownian particles does not affect the appearance of a motility-induced phase separation into a dense and a dilute phase, caused…
Dynamic instability of microtubules is considered using frameworks of non-linear thermodynamics and non-equilibrium reaction-diffusion systems. Stochastic assembly/disassembly phases in the polymerization dynamics of microtubules are…
We develop a general theory of microtubule (MT) deformations by molecular motors generating internal force doublets within the MT lattice. We describe two basic internal excitations, the S and V shape, and compare them with experimental…
Efficient nutrient mixing is crucial for the survival of bacterial colonies and other living systems. This raises the question of whether the optimization of mixing through the emergence of active turbulent motion in bacterial swarms played…
We use optical trapping to continuously bend an isolated microtubule while simultaneously measuring the applied force and the resulting filament strain, thus allowing us to determine its elastic properties over a wide range of applied…
Molecular-motor generated active stresses drive the cytoskeleton away from equilibrium, endowing it with tunable mechanical properties that are essential for diverse functions such as cell division and motility[1-5]. Designing analogous…
Molecular dynamics simulations were employed to investigate the phase separation process of a two-dimensional active Brownian dumbbell model. We evaluated the time dependence of the typical size of the dense component using the scaling…
Flexible filaments moving in viscous fluids are ubiquitous in the natural microscopic world. For example, the swimming of bacteria and spermatozoa as well as important physiological functions at organ-level, such as the cilia-induced motion…
Colloids dispersed in nematic liquid crystals form topological composites in which colloid-associated defects mediate interactions while adhering to fundamental topological constraints. Better realising the promise of such materials…
We introduce a minimal model for a collection of self-propelled apolar active particles, also called as `active nematic', on a two-dimensional substrate and study the order-disorder transition with the variation of density. The particles…