Related papers: Biofilms as self-shaping growing nematics

I put forward a continuum theory for active nematic gels, defined as fluids or suspensions of orientable rodlike objects endowed with active dynamics, that is based on symmetry arguments and compatibility with thermodynamics. The starting…

How particles are deposited at the edge of evaporating droplets, i.e. the {\em coffee ring} effect, plays a crucial role in phenomena as diverse as thin-film deposition, self-assembly, and biofilm formation. Recently, microorganisms have…

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…

Active matter consumes energy from the environment and transforms it into mechanical work. Notable examples from biology include cell division, bacterial swarms, and muscle contraction. In this work, we investigate the nature of active…

Many active systems display nematic order, while interacting with their environment. In this work, we show theoretically how environment-stored memory acts an effective external field that aligns active nematics. The coupling to the…

Recent experiments and numerical studies have drawn attention to the dynamics of active nematics. Two-dimensional active nematics flow spontaneously and exhibit spatiotemporal chaotic flows with proliferation of topological defects in the…

Bacterial communities such as biofilms are widely recognised as being important for survival and persistence of bacteria in harsh environments. Mechanistic models of biofilm growth indicate that the way in which the surface is seeded can…

Biofilms are communities of bacteria that exhibit a multitude of multiscale biomechanical behaviors. Recent experimental advances have lead to characterizations of these behaviors in terms of measurements of the viscoelastic moduli of…

Active materials are capable of converting free energy into mechanical work to produce autonomous motion, and exhibit striking collective dynamics that biology relies on for essential functions. Controlling those dynamics and transport in…

The work presents the analysis of the free boundary value problem related to the invasion model of new species in biofilm reactors. In the framework of continuum approach to mathematical modelling of biofilm growth, the problem consists of…

The multifarious internal workings of organisms are difficult to reconcile with a single feature defining a state of being alive. Indeed, definitions of life rely on emergent properties (growth, capacity to evolve, agency) only symptomatic…

Cell monolayers are a central model system to tissue biophysics. In vivo, epithelial tissues are curved on the scale of microns, and curvature's role in the onset of spontaneous tissue flows is still not well-understood. Here, we present a…

We systematically explore the self-assembly of semi-flexible polymers in deformable spherical confinement across a wide regime of chain stiffness, contour lengths and packing fractions by means of coarse-grained molecular dynamics…

Active matter comprises individual units that convert energy into mechanical motion. In many examples, such as bacterial systems and biofilament assays, constituent units are elongated and can give rise to local nematic orientational order.…

Various microorganisms and some mammalian cells are able to swim in viscous fluids by performing nonreciprocal body deformations, such as rotating attached flagella or by distorting their entire body. In order to perform chemotaxis, i.e. to…

Bacteria are ubiquitous in our daily lives, either as motile planktonic cells or as immobilized surface-attached biofilms. These different phenotypic states play key roles in agriculture, environment, industry, and medicine; hence, it is…

Active matter embraces systems that self-organize at different length and time scales, often exhibiting turbulent flows. Here, we use a quasi-two-dimensional nematically ordered layer of a protein-based active gel to experimentally…

Active droplets are artificial microswimmers built from a liquid dispersion by microfluidic tools and showing self-propelled motion. These systems hold particular interest for mimicking biological phenomena, such as some aspects of cell…

Engineering spatially organized biofilms for creating adaptive and sustainable biomaterials is a forthcoming mission of synthetic biology. Existing technologies of patterning biofilm materials suffer limitations associated with the high…

Using a minimal continuum model, we investigate the interplay between circular confinement and substrate friction in active nematics. Upon increasing the friction from low to high, we observe a dynamical phase transition from a circulating…