Related papers: The nonlinear motion of cells subject to external …
Quantifying the outcomes of cells collisions is a crucial step in building the foundations of a kinetic theory of living matter. Here, we develop a mechanical theory of such collisions by first representing individual cells as extended…
Active emulsions and liquid crystalline shells are intriguing and experimentally realisable types of topological matter. Here we numerically study the morphology and spatiotemporal dynamics of a double emulsion, where one or two passive…
We study chemically driven running droplets on a partially wetting solid substrate by means of coupled evolution equations for the thickness profile of the droplets and the density profile of an adsorbate layer. Two models are introduced…
A flexible membrane deforming its shape in time can self-propel in a viscous fluid. Alternatively, if the membrane is anchored, its deformation will lead to fluid transport. Past work in this area focused on situations where the deformation…
Chemically active droplets provide simple models for cell-like systems that can grow and divide. Such active droplet systems are driven away from thermodynamic equilibrium and turn over chemically, which corresponds to a simple metabolism.…
Nonlinear elastic responses of short and stiff polyelectrolytes are investigated by dynamic simulations on a single molecule level. When a polyelectrolyte condensate undergoes a mechanical unfolding, two types of force-extension curves,…
Molecular dynamics studies of nono-sized rigid grains, droplets and bubbles in nano-sized pores indicate that the drag force may have a hydrodynamic form if the moving object is dense and small compared to the pore diameter. Otherwise, the…
We study the kinematics and dynamics of a highly compliant membrane disk placed head-on in a uniform flow. With increasing flow velocity, the membrane deforms nonlinearly into increasingly parachute-like shapes. These aerodynamically…
The dynamic behavior of a partially wetting polymer droplet driven over a nanostructured interface is studied using molecular dynamics simulations. We consider the bead-spring model to represent a polymeric liquid that partially wets a…
The swimming of cells, far from any boundary, can arise in the absence of long-range liquid-crystalline order within the cytoplasm, but simple models of this effect are lacking. Here we present a two-dimensional model of droplet…
We consider two minimal models of active fluid droplets that exhibit complex dynamics including steady motion, deformation, rotation and oscillating motion. First we consider a droplet with a concentration of active contractile matter…
Many biological and synthetic systems are suspensions of oriented, actively-moving components. Unlike in passive suspensions, the interplay between orientational order, active flows, and interactions with boundaries gives rise to…
We investigate the dynamical coupling between the motion and the deformation of a single self-propelled domain based on two different model systems in two dimensions. One is represented by the set of ordinary differential equations for the…
Tracking experiments in dense biological tissues reveal a diversity of sources f or local energy injection at the cell scale. The effect of cell motility has been largely studied, but much less is known abo ut the effect of the observed…
Using numerical simulations, we characterized the behavior of an elastic membrane immersed in an active fluid. Our findings reveal a nontrivial folding and re-expansion of the membrane that is controlled by the interplay of its resistance…
The mechanics of crawling cells on a substrate is investigated by using a minimal model that satisfies the force-free condition. A cell is described by two subcellular elements connected by a linear actuator that changes the length of the…
Cells are modeled with spherical grains connected each other. Each cell can shrink and swell by transporting its fluid content to other connected neighbor while still maintaining its density at constant value. As a spherical part of a cell…
The spreading of a liquid over a solid material is a key process in a wide range of applications. While this phenomenon is well understood when the solid is undeformable, its "soft" counterpart is still ill-understood and no consensus has…
Individual movements of a rod-like self-propelled particle on a flat substrate are quantified. Biological systems that fit into this description may be the Gram-negative delta-proteobacterium Myxococcus xanthus, Gram-negative bacterium…
Driven particles in presence of crowded environment, obstacles or kinetic constraints often exhibit negative differential mobility (NDM) due to their decreased dynamical activity. We propose a new mechanism for complex many-particle systems…