Related papers: Biofilms as self-shaping growing nematics
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…
From the mitotic spindle up to tissues and biofilms, many biological systems behave as active droplets, which often break symmetry and change shape spontaneously. Here, I show that active nematic droplets can experience a fingering…
Bacillus subtilis biofilms were grown in laminar channel flow at wall shear stress spanning one order of magnitude ($\tau_w = 0.068$ Pa to $\tau_w = 0.67$ Pa). We monitor, non-invasively, the evolution of the three-dimensional distribution…
Biomembranes wrapping cells and organelles are not only the partitions that separate the insides but also dynamic fields for biological functions accompanied by membrane shape changes. In this review, we discuss the spatiotemporal patterns…
A biofilm is a self-contained community of bacteria that uses signaling molecules called autoinducers (AIs) to coordinate responses through the process of quorum sensing. Biofilms exhibit a dual role that drives interest in both combating…
Building on the striking similarity between the structure of the spindle during mitosis in living cells and nematic textures in confined liquid crystals, we use a continuum model of two-dimensional nematic liquid crystal droplets, to…
We report hybrid lattice Boltzmann (HLB) simulations of the hydrodynamics of an active nematic liquid crystal sandwiched between confining walls with various anchoring conditions. We confirm the existence of a transition between a passive…
In vitro reconstituted active systems, such as the ATP-driven microtubule bundle suspension developed by the Dogic group, provide a fertile testing ground for elucidating the phenomenology of active liquid crystalline states. Controlling…
In densely-packed two-dimensional systems of growing cells, such as rod-shaped bacteria, a number of experimental and numerical studies report distinct patterns of nematic orientational order in the presence of confinement. So far, these…
Nanoporous media exhibit structures significantly smaller than the wavelengths of visible light and can thus act as photonic metamaterials. Their optical functionality is not determined by the properties of the base materials, but rather by…
Biological cells can actively tune their intracellular architecture according to their overall shape. Here we explore the rheological implication of such coupling in a minimal model of a dense cellular material where each cell exerts an…
Bacterial colonies are abundant on living and nonliving surfaces and are known to mediate a broad range of processes in ecology, medicine, and industry. Although extensively researched, from single cells to demographic scales, a…
We propose a general parametrizable model to capture the dynamic interaction among bacteria in the formation of micro-colonies. micro-colonies represent the first social step towards the formation of structured multicellular communities…
Achieving control and tunability of lyotropic materials has been a long-standing goal of liquid crystal research. Here we show that the elasticity of a liquid crystal system consisting of a dense suspension of semiflexible biopolymers can…
Increasing evidence suggests that active matter exhibits instances of mixed symmetry that cannot be fully described by either polar or nematic formalism. Here, we introduce a minimal model that integrates self-propulsion into the active…
Models of active nematics in biological systems normally require complexity arising from the hydrodynamics involved at the microscopic level as well as the viscoelastic nature of the system. Here we show that a minimal, space-independent,…
Bacterial biofilms play a significant role in various fields that impact our daily lives, from detrimental public health hazards to beneficial applications in bioremediation, biodegradation, and wastewater treatment. However,…
In this work we consider how surface-adherent bacterial biofilm communities respond in flowing systems. We simulate the fluid-structure interaction and separation process using the immersed boundary method. In these simulations we model and…
Active nematic systems consist of rod-like internally driven subunits that interact with one another to form large-scale coherent flows. They are important examples of far-from-equilibrium fluids, which exhibit a wealth of nonlinear…
Animal cells in tissues are supported by biopolymer matrices, which typically exhibit highly nonlinear mechanical properties. While the linear elasticity of the matrix can significantly impact cell mechanics and functionality, it remains…