Related papers: Phototactic cyanobacteria as an active matter syst…
Dense active systems are widespread in nature, examples range from bacterial colonies to biological tissues. Dense clusters of active particles can be obtained by increasing the packing fraction of the system or taking advantage of a…
Understanding how microorganisms navigate in complex environments is a central question in active matter and biological physics. Phototaxis - the ability to use light as a navigation cue - is a widespread strategy in motile microalgae to…
Active matter is a new class of material, intrinsically out-of equilibrium with intriguing properties. So far, the recent upsurge of studies has mostly focused on the spontaneous behavior of these systems --in the absence of external…
Active matter deals with systems whose particles consume energy at the individual level in order to move. To unravel features such as the emergence of collective structures several models have been suggested, such as the on-lattice model of…
The Dynamic Template model of biological cell membranes and the cytoplasm as spatially organised fluid layers is extended to plant cells, and is shown to offer a feasible shear driven mechanism for the co-alignment of internal and external…
Many microorganisms, with phytoplankton and zooplankton as prominent examples, display phototactic behaviour, that is, the ability to perform directed motion within a light gradient. Here we experimentally demonstrate that sensing of light…
Swimmers and self-propelled particles are physical models for the collective behaviour and motility of a wide variety of living systems, such as bacteria colonies, bird flocks and fish schools. Such artificial active materials are amenable…
Chemotaxis, the movement of an organism in response to chemical stimuli, is a typical feature of many microbiological systems. In particular, the social amoeba \textit{Disctyostelium discoideum} is widely used as a model organism, but it is…
Active filaments, such as microtubules with attached cargo-carrying motor proteins, are important dynamic structures for fluid transport in and around living cells. The mathematical models of active filaments appearing in the literature…
The coupling of the internal mechanisms of cell polarization to cell shape deformations and subsequent cell crawling poses many interdisciplinary scientific challenges. Several mathematical approaches have been proposed to model the…
Simple active models of matter recapitulate complex biological phenomena. The out-of-equilibrium nature of these models, however, often makes them beyond the reach of first-principle descriptions. This limitation is particularly perplexing…
Activity can organize matter in unique configurations inaccessible to equilibrium systems, including a sundry of spiraling shapes seen in nature that range from galaxies to living tissues to fossilized stromatolites. How these dynamic yet…
Microorganismal motility is often characterised by complex responses to environmental physico-chemical stimuli. Although the biological basis of these responses is often not well understood, their exploitation already promises novel avenues…
Collective motion is often modeled within the framework of active fluids, where the constituent active particles, when interactions with other particles are switched off, perform normal diffusion at long times. However, in biology,…
Electrodynamic interactions between biomolecules are of potential biological interest for signaling warranting investigation of their activation through various mechanisms in living systems. Here, using as model system a light harvesting…
Many biological systems consist of self-motile and passive agents both of which contribute to overall functionality. However, there are very few studies of the properties of such mixtures. Here we formulate a model for mixtures of…
In this paper we consider dynamics of a molecular system subjected to external pumping by a light source. Within a completely quantum mechanical treatment, we derive a general formula, which enables to asses effects of different light…
Dynamical clustering represents a characteristic feature of active matter consisting of self-propelled agents that convert energy from the environment into mechanical motion. At the micron scale, typical of overdamped dynamics, particles…
Recent experimental studies, both in vivo and in vitro, have revealed that membrane components that bind to the cortical actomyosin meshwork are driven by active fluctuations, whereas membrane components that do not bind to cortical actin…
Activity and autonomous motion are fundamental aspects of many living and engineering systems. Here, the scale of biological agents covers a wide range, from nanomotors, cytoskeleton, and cells, to insects, fish, birds, and people. Inspired…