Related papers: Geometrical control of interface patterning underl…
Propagating interfaces are ubiquitous in nature, underlying instabilities and pattern formation in biology and material science. Physical principles governing interface growth are well understood in passive settings; however, our…
Cellular structures must organize themselves within strict physical constraints, operating with finite resources and well-defined boundaries. Classical systems demonstrate only passive responses to boundaries, from surface energy…
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…
Inspired by recent experimental observation of patterning at the membrane of a living cell, we propose a generic model for the dynamics of a fluctuating interface driven by particle-like inclusions which stimulate its growth. We find that…
Collective and directed motility or swarming is an emergent phenomenon displayed by many self-organized assemblies of active biological matter such as clusters of embryonic cells during tissue development, cancerous cells during tumor…
Purely repulsive active particles spontaneously undergo motility-induced phase separation (MIPS) into condensed and dilute phases. Remarkably, the mechanical tension measured along the interface between these phases is negative. In…
A flat sheet programmed with a planar pattern of spontaneous shape change will morph into a curved surface. Such metric mechanics is seen in growing biological sheets, and may be engineered in actuating soft matter sheets such as…
Soft and biological matter come in a variety of shapes and geometries. When soft surfaces that do not fit into each other due to a mismatch in Gaussian curvatures form an interface, beautiful geometry-induced patterns emerge. In this paper,…
We investigate the effects of heterogeneous (spatially varying) activity in a hydrodynamical model for dense bacterial suspensions, confining ourselves to experimentally realizable, simple, quenched, activity patterns. We show that the…
Navigation of microorganisms is controlled by internal processes ultimately sensitive to mechanical or chemical signaling encountered along the path. In many natural environments, such as porous soils or physiological ducts, motile species…
We investigate the steady-state organisation of active particles residing on an interface. Particle activity induces interface deformations, while the local shape of the interface guides particle movement. We consider multiple species of…
We study the structure and dynamics of the interface separating a passive fluid from a microtubule-based active fluid. Turbulent-like active flows power giant interfacial fluctuations, which exhibit pronounced asymmetry between regions of…
The growth of several biological tissues is known to be controlled in part by local geometrical features, such as the curvature of the tissue interface. This control leads to changes in tissue shape that in turn can affect the tissue's…
Shells, when confined, can deform in a broad assortment of shapes and patterns, often quite dissimilar to what is produced by their flat counterparts (plates). In this work we discuss the morphological landscape of shells deposited on a…
A long-standing goal of materials science is to understand, predict and control the evolution of microstructures in crystalline materials. Most microstructure evolution is controlled by interface motion; hence, the establishment of rigorous…
Active materials take advantage of their internal sources of energy to self-organize in an automated manner. This feature provides a novel opportunity to design micron-scale machines with minimal required control. However, self-organization…
Dense bacterial suspensions at fluid interfaces provide a natural platform to explore active turbulence in a dimensional mismatch: active units are restricted to a two-dimensional surface, while the induced flows extend into the surrounding…
Cell invasion and spatial pattern formation are two distinct manifestations of cellular self-organisation in development, regeneration, and disease. Here, we develop and analyse a unified theoretical framework that links these two seemingly…
Bacterial colonies are a well-known example of living active matter, exhibiting collective behaviors such as nematic alignment and collective motion that play an important role in the spread of microbial infections. While the underlying…
Geometric confinement plays an important role in the dynamics of natural and synthetic microswimmers from bacterial cells to self-propelled particles in high-throughput microfluidic devices. However, little is known about the effects of…