Related papers: Emergence of Tension Chains and Active Force Patte…

The accumulation of self-propelled particles on repulsive barriers is a widely observed feature in active matter. Despite being implicated in a broad range of biological processes, from biofilm formation to cytoskeletal movement, wetting of…

Essentially all biology is active and dynamic. Biological entities autonomously sense, com- pute, and respond using energy-coupled ratchets that can produce force and do work. The cytoskeleton, along with its associated proteins and motors,…

The actin cytoskeleton is a key component in the machinery of eukaryotic cells, and it selfassembles out of equilibrium into a wide variety of biologically crucial structures. While the molecular mechanisms involved are well characterized,…

We present a minimal continuum model of strongly adhering cells as active contractile isotropic media and use the model to study the effect of the geometry of the adhesion patch in controlling the spatial distribution of traction and…

Current understanding of how contractility emerges in disordered actomyosin networks of non-muscle cells is still largely based on the intuition derived from earlier works on muscle contractility. This view, however, largely overlooks the…

We present a microscopic model of a disordered viscoelastic active solid, i.e. an active material whose long time behaviour is elastic as opposed to viscous. It is composed of filaments, passive crosslinks and molecular motors powered by…

While cell crawling on a solid surface is relatively well understood, and relies on substrate adhesion, some cells can also swim in the bulk, through mechanisms that are still largely unclear. Here, we propose a minimal model for in-bulk…

Actin and myosin drive many instances of force generation, deformation, and shape change in cells, tissues, and organisms. In particular, cytoskeletal actomyosin is remarkable in its adaptive architecture, responding to a host of…

We use optical tweezers microrheology and fluorescence microscopy to apply nonlinear microscale strains to entangled and crosslinked actin networks, and measure the resulting stress and actin filament deformations. We couple nonlinear…

Cell spreading and motility on an adhesive substrate are driven by the active physical forces generated by the actin cytoskeleton. We have recently shown that coupling curved membrane complexes to protrusive forces, exerted by the actin…

Active force generation by actin-myosin cortex coupled to the cell membrane allows the cell to deform, respond to the environment, and mediate cell motility and division. Several membrane-bound activator proteins move along it and couple to…

A phenomenological description for active bundles of polar filaments is presented. The activity of the bundle results from crosslinks, that induce relative displacements between the aligned filaments. Our generic description is based on…

Animal cells are active, contractile objects. While bioassays address the molecular characterization of cell contractility, the mechanical characterization of the active forces in cells remains challenging. Here by confronting theoretical…

Tissues of living cells are a prime example of active fluids. There is experimental evidence that tissues generate extensile active stress even though their constituting cells are contractile. Fluctuating forces that could result from…

Structure formation and constant reorganization of the actin cytoskeleton are key requirements for the function of living cells. Here we show that a minimal reconstituted system consisting of actin filaments, crosslinking molecules and…

During cell division active flows occur in the cortex, a thin layer of gel like network of acto myosin filaments, beneath the cell surface. The cortical flow and the associated stresses bring about change in the cell shape, in particular a…

The cytoskeletal component actomyosin is a canonical example of active matter since the powerstroke cycle locally converts chemical energy in the form of adenoside triphosphate (ATP) into mechanical work for remodelling. Observing myosin II…

The spontaneous generation of electrical activity underpins a number of essential physiological processes, and is observed even in tissues where specialized pacemaker cells have not been identified. The emergence of periodic oscillations in…

Active networks composed of biopolymers and motor proteins provide versatile biomimetic systems that have advanced active matter physics and deepened our understanding of cytoskeletal dynamics and self-organization under diverse stimuli. In…

We propose a novel mechanism of cell motility, which relies on the coupling of actin polymerization at the cell membrane to geometric confinement. We consider a polymerizing viscoelastic cytoskeletal gel confined in a narrow channel, and…