Related papers: Phototactic cyanobacteria as an active matter syst…
Active matter consists of units that generate mechanical work by consuming energy. Examples include living systems, such as assemblies of bacteria and biological tissues, biopolymers driven by molecular motors, and suspensions of synthetic…
The bacterium {\em Bacilus subtilis} frequently forms biofilms at the interface between the culture medium and the air. We develop a mathematical model that couples a description of bacteria as individual discrete objects to the standard…
Collective cell migration in 3D extracellular matrix (ECM) is crucial to many physiological and pathological processes. Migrating cells can generate active pulling forces via actin filament contraction, which are transmitted to the ECM…
Biological active materials such as bacterial biofilms and eukaryotic cells thrive in confined micro-spaces. Here, we show through numerical simulations that confinement can serve as a mechanical guidance to achieve distinct modes of…
Collective locomotion of swimming and flying animals is fascinating in terms of individual-level fluid mechanics and group-level structure and dynamics. Here we bridge and relate these scales through a model of formation flight that views…
The cooperative binding of molecular agents onto a substrate is pervasive in living systems. To study whether a system shows cooperativity, one can rely on a fluctuation analysis of quantities such as the number of substrate-bound units and…
Phototaxis, the process by which living organisms navigate toward optimal light conditions, is essential for motile photosynthetic microorganisms. Positive(negative) phototaxis denotes the motion directed towards(away from) the source of…
Living systems are capable of locomotion, reconfiguration, and replication. To perform these tasks, cells spatiotemporally coordinate the interactions of force-generating, "active" molecules that create and manipulate non-equilibrium…
Very simple organisms, such as the single-celled amoeboid slime mould Physarum polycephalum possess no neural tissue yet, despite this, are known to exhibit complex biological and computational behaviour. Given such limited resources, can…
Active matter describes materials whose constituents are driven out of equilibrium by continuous energy consumption, for instance from ATP. Due to the orientable character of the constituents, active suspensions can attain liquid…
Active matter is a term encompassing particle-based assemblies with some form of self-propulsion, including certain biological systems as well as synthetic systems such as artificial colloidal swimmers, all of which can exhibit a remarkable…
Escherichia coli has long been used as a model organism due to the extensive experimental characterization of its pathways and molecular components. Take chemotaxis as an example, which allows bacteria to sense and swim in response to…
Cells control fluid flows with a spatial and temporal precision that far exceeds the capabilities of current microfluidic technologies. Cells achieve this superior spatio-temporal control by harnessing dynamic networks of cytoskeleton and…
Collective motion in biology is often modelled as a dynamical system, in which individuals are represented as particles whose interactions are determined by the current state of the system. Many animals, however, including humans, have…
The collective behaviour of confluent cell sheets is strongly influenced both by polar forces, arising through cytoskeletal propulsion and by active inter-cellular forces, which are mediated by interactions across cell-cell junctions. We…
The diffusion of active microscopic organisms in complex environments plays an important role in a wide range of biological phenomena from cell colony growth to single organism transport. Here, we investigate theoretically and…
The transport of motile entities across modulated energy landscapes plays an important role in a range of phenomena in biology, colloidal science and solid-state physics. Here, an easily implementable strategy that allows for the collective…
Conspectus: The ability to navigate in chemical gradients, called chemotaxis, is crucial for the survival of microorganisms. It allows them to find food and to escape from toxins. Many microorganisms can produce the chemicals to which they…
Many active systems are capable of forming intriguing patterns at scales significantly larger than the size of their individual constituents. Cyanobacteria are one of the most ancient and important phyla of organisms that has allowed the…
The experimental use of micropatterned quasi-1D substrates has emerged as an useful experimental tool to study the nature of cell-cell interactions and gain insight on collective behaviour of cell colonies. Inspired by these experiments, we…