Related papers: Biofilm self-patterning: mechanical forces drive a…

Motile bacteria can migrate along chemical gradients in a process known as chemotaxis. When exposed to uniform environmental stress, Escherichia coli cells coordinate their chemotactic responses to form millimeter-sized condensates…

Initial residual stress is omnipresent in biological tissues and soft matter, and can affect growth-induced pattern selection significantly. Here we demonstrate this effect experimentally by letting soft tubes grow in the presence or…

The field of active matter explores the behaviors of self propelled agents out of equilibrium, with active suspensions, such as swimming bacteria in solutions, serving as impactful models. These systems exhibit spatio-temporal patterns akin…

During the early developmental process of organisms, the formation of the left-right laterality requires a subtle mechanism, as it is associated with other principal body axes. Any inherent chiral feature in an egg cell can in principal…

The Extra-Cellular-Matrix (ECM) is a complex interconnected 3D network that provides structural support for the cells and tissues and defines organ architecture key for their healthy functioning. However, the intimate mechanisms by which…

The transition from monolayers to multilayered structures in bacterial colonies is a fundamental step in biofilm development. Observed across different morphotypes and species, this transition is triggered within freely growing bacterial…

In densely-packed two-dimensional systems of growing cells, such as rod-shaped bacteria, a number of experimental and numerical studies report distinct patterns of nematic orientational order in the presence of confinement. So far, these…

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…

Nanoparticles introduced in living cells are capable of strongly promoting the aggregation of peptides and proteins. We use here molecular dynamics simulations to characterise in detail the process by which nanoparticle surfaces catalyse…

A mixture of particles with perception-dependent motility and opposite misaligned visual perception shows to spontaneously self-organize into a self-propelling bean-shaped cluster. The two species initially rotate in opposite directions,…

We demonstrate that active rotations in chemically signalling particles, such as autochemotactic {\it E. coli} close to walls, create a route for pattern formation based on a nonlinear yet deterministic instability mechanism. For slow…

We propose a computational framework to study the growth and spread of bacterial biofilms on interfaces, as well as the action of antibiotics on them. Bacterial membranes are represented by boundaries immersed in a fluid matrix and subject…

We propose a modeling approach to study how mature biofilms spread and colonize new surfaces by predicting the formation and growth of satellite colonies generated by dispersing biofilms. This model provides the basis for better…

Motility is a fundamental survival strategy of bacteria to navigate porous environments. Swimming cells thrive in quiescent wetlands and sediments at the bottom of the marine water column, where they mediate many essential biogeochemical…

In the growth of bacterial colonies, a great variety of complex patterns are observed in experiments, depending on external conditions and the bacterial species. Typically, existing models employ systems of reaction-diffusion equations or…

Coarsening, the process where larger structures grow at the expense of smaller ones, is a fundamental aspect of multiphase systems. The cell cytoplasm exemplifies an out-of-equilibrium multiphase system, where phase-separated condensates…

From biofilm and colony formation in bacteria to wound healing and embryonic development in multicellular organisms, groups of living cells must often move collectively. While considerable study has probed the biophysical mechanisms of how…

Many types of mammalian cells exert active contractile forces and mechanically deform their elastic substrate, to accomplish biological functions such as cell migration. These substrate deformations provide a mechanism by which cells can…

The kinetic mechanisms underlying bottom-up assembly of colloidal particles have been widely investigated in efforts to control crystallization pathways and to direct growth into targeted superstructures for applications including photonic…

Equilibrium self-assembly and conventional materials processing techniques fall far short of mimicking dynamic self-actuating processes that are commonplace throughout biology. To bridge the gap between living and synthetic matter, we study…