Related papers: Biofilms as self-shaping growing nematics
Active matter systems such as eukaryotic cells and bacteria continuously transform chemical energy to motion. Hence living systems exert active stresses on the complex environments in which they reside. One recurring aspect of this…
Recent studies have shown that packings of cells, both eukaryotic cellular tissues and growing or swarming bacterial colonies, can often be understood as active nematic fluids. A key property of volume-conserving active nematic model…
In active matter systems, deformable boundaries provide a mechanism to organize internal active stresses and perform work on the external environment. To study a minimal model of such a system, we perform particle-based simulations of an…
Biofilms are antibiotic-resistant bacterial aggregates that grow on moist surfaces and can trigger hospital-acquired infections. They provide a classical example in biology where the dynamics of cellular communities may be observed and…
Elastic active matter or active solid consists of self-propelled units embedded in an elastic matrix. Active solid resists deformation; the shape-preserving property and the intrinsic non-equilibrium nature make active solids a superior…
Active nematics are out-of-equilibrium systems in which energy injection at the microscale drives emergent collective behaviors, from spontaneous flows to active turbulence. While the dynamics of these systems have been extensively studied,…
The emergence of long-range spatiotemporal order from intrinsic chaos is a central challenge in far-from-equilibrium physics. In active fluids, such as cytoskeletal networks driving cellular motion, self-generated flows typically produce…
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…
Being intrinsically nonequilibrium, active materials can potentially perform functions that would be thermodynamically forbidden in passive materials. However, active systems have diverse local attractors that correspond to distinct…
Monolayers of growing non-motile rod-shaped bacteria act as active nematic materials composed of hard particles rather than the flexible components of other commonly studied active nematics. The organization of these granular monolayers has…
The ability of bacteria to colonize and grow on different surfaces is an essential process for biofilm development and depends on complex biomechanical interactions between the biofilm and the underlying substrate. Changes in the physical…
In some conditions, bacteria self-organise into biofilms, supracellular structures made of a self-produced embedding matrix, mainly composed on polysaccharides, DNA, proteins and lipids. It is known that bacteria change their colony/matrix…
Collective behavior of bacterial colonies plays critical roles in adaptability, survivability, biofilm expansion and infection. We employ an individual-based model of an interstitial biofilm to study emergent pattern formation based on the…
We consider the hydrodynamic theory of an active fluid of self-propelled particles with nematic aligning interactions. This class of materials has polar symmetry at the microscopic level, but forms macrostates of nematic symmetry. We…
Active nematics are materials composed of mobile, elongated particles that can transform energy from the environment into a mechanical motion. Current experimental realizations of the active nematics are of biological origin and include…
The study of liquid crystals at equilibrium has led to fundamental insights into the nature of ordered materials, as well as to practical applications such as display technologies. Active nematics are a fundamentally different class of…
The field of active nematics has traditionally employed descriptions based on dipolar activity, with interactions that align along a single axis. However, it has been theoretically predicted that interactions with a substrate, prevalent in…
The dynamics of cellular aggregates is driven by the interplay of mechanochemical processes and cellular activity. Although deterministic models may capture mechanical features, local chemical fluctuations trigger random cell responses,…
We investigate photo-responsive structure formation in a minimal model of dry active nematics. Combining microscopic simulations with the analysis of the corresponding hydrodynamic theory, we show that the system generically self-assembles…
Biofilms are ubiquitous macro-colonies of bacteria that develop at various interfaces (solid-liquid, solid-gas or liquid-gas). The formation of biofilms starts with the attachment of individual bacteria to an interface, where they…