Related papers: Persistent fluid flows defined by active matter bo…
Cytoskeletal networks are foundational examples of active matter and central to self-organized structures in the cell. In vivo, these networks are active and heavily crosslinked. Relating their large-scale dynamics to properties of their…
Microfluidics, the study of fluids in microscopic channels, has led to important advances in fields as diverse as microelectronics, biotechnology and chemistry. Microfluidic research is primarily based on the use of microfluidic chips,…
Living cells are soft bodies of a characteristic form, but endowed with a capacity for a steady turnover of their structures. Both of these material properties, i.e. recovery of the shape after an external stress has been imposed and…
A number of micro-scale biological flows are characterized by spatio-temporal chaos. These include dense suspensions of swimming bacteria, microtubule bundles driven by motor proteins, and dividing and migrating confluent layers of cells. A…
We investigate the behavior of self-propelled particles under cyclic stretching, inspired by the characteristic pattern dynamics observed in microtubule (MT) motility assays subjected to uniaxial cyclic substrate stretching. We develop a…
The ability of many living systems to actively self-propel underlies critical biomedical, environmental, and industrial processes. While such active transport is well-studied in uniform settings, environmental complexities such as geometric…
Biological systems exhibit large-scale self-organized dynamics and structures which enable organisms to perform the functions of life. The field of active matter strives to develop and understand microscopically-driven nonequilibrium…
Active matter systems evade the constraints of thermal equilibrium, leading to the emergence of intriguing collective behavior. A paradigmatic example is given by motor-filament mixtures, where the motion of motor proteins drives alignment…
Active matter classifies systems consisting of self-propelled units which convert the energy stored locally or extracted from their environment into directed motion. It has recently attracted considerable attention due to rich new physics…
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…
Cells accomplish diverse functions using the same molecular building blocks, from setting up cytoplasmic flows to generating mechanical forces. In particular, transitions between these non-equilibrium states are triggered by regulating the…
Photosynthetic microbes have evolved and successfully adapted to the ever-changing environmental conditions in complex microhabitats throughout almost all ecosystems on Earth. In the absence of light, they can sustain their biological…
Active matter locally converts chemical energy into mechanical work and, for this reason, it provides new mechanisms of pattern formation. In particular, active gels made of protein motors and filaments are far-from-equilibrium systems that…
Active matter consumes energy from the environment and transforms it into mechanical work. Notable examples from biology include cell division, bacterial swarms, and muscle contraction. In this work, we investigate the nature of active…
Self-propelled microparticles create flow fields that determine how they interact with surfaces, external flows, and each other. These flow fields fall into distinct classes--pushers, pullers, and neutral swimmers--each exhibiting…
Active networks made of biopolymers and motor proteins are valuable bioinspired systems that have been used in the last decades to study the cytoskeleton and its self-organization under mechanical stimulation. Different techniques are…
Two dimensional active fluids display a transition from turbulent to coherent flow upon decreasing the size of the confining geometry. A recent experiment suggests that the behavior in three dimensions is remarkably different; emergent…
We study the dynamics of a self-propelled particle advected by a steady laminar flow. The persistent motion of the self-propelled particle is described by an active Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. We focus on the diffusivity properties of 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…
Turbulence is ubiquitous, from oceanic currents to small-scale biological and quantum systems. Self-sustained turbulent motion in microbial suspensions presents an intriguing example of collective dynamical behavior amongst the simplest…