Related papers: Locomotion of Active Sheets Driven by Curvature Mo…

Cells move differently on substrates with different elasticities. In particular, the persistence time of their motion is higher on stiffer substrates. We show that this behavior will result in a net transport of cells directed up a…

Living systems are capable of locomotion, reconfiguration, and replication. To perform these tasks, cells spatiotemporally coordinate the interactions of force-generating, "active" molecules that create and manipulate non-equilibrium…

How chirality propagates across scales remains an open question in many biological and synthetic systems. An especially clear manifestation of this propagation is found in in vitro gliding assays of cytoskeletal filaments on surfaces,…

The dynamics of a membrane coupled to an active fluid on top of a substrate is considered theoretically. It is assumed that the director field of the active fluid has rotational symmetry in the membrane plane. This situation is likely to be…

While many living biological media combine both viscous and elastic properties, most theoretical studies employ either purely fluid- or solid-like descriptions. We here use a unified framework for active films on substrates capable of…

Interaction between active materials and the boundaries of geometrical confinement is key to many emergent phenomena in active systems. For living active matter consisting of animal cells or motile bacteria, the confinement boundary is…

Viscoelasticity governs the locomotion strategies of deformable microorganisms, rendering it a fundamental mechanical property of microbial motility and an integral component in the design of envisioned microbots. Recent studies have shown…

Elastic confinements are an important component of many biological systems and dictate the transport properties of suspended particles under flow. In this chapter, we review the Brownian motion of a particle moving in the vicinity of a…

Active gels play an important role in biology and in inspiring biomimetic active materials, due to their ability to change shape, size and create their own morphology; the relevant mechanics behind these changes is driven by…

The ability of many living systems to actively self-propel underlies critical biomedical, environmental, and industrial processes. While such active transport is well-studied in uniform settings, environmental complexities such as geometric…

We develop a model of amoeboid cell motility based on active gel theory. Modeling the motile apparatus of a eukaryotic cell as a confined layer of finite length of poroelastic active gel permeated by a solvent, we first show that, due to…

In many biological systems, the curvature of the surfaces cells live on influence their collective properties. Curvature should likewise influence the behavior of active colloidal particles. We show using molecular simulation of…

Fiberboids are active filaments trapped at the interface of two phases, able of harnessing energy (and matter) fluxes across the interface in order to produce a rolling-like self-propulsion. We discuss several table-top examples and develop…

Using agent-based simulations of self-propelled particles subject to short-range repulsion and nematic alignment we explore the dynamical phases of a dense active material confined to the surface of a sphere. We map the dynamical phase…

Drops of active liquid crystal have recently shown the ability to self-propel, which was associated with topological defects in the orientation of active filaments [Sanchez {\em et al.}, Nature {\bf 491}, 431 (2013)]. Here, we study the…

To study the impact of active systems on their surroundings, we introduce a model that couples an active nematic fluid to an isotropic substrate fluid via friction. We numerically show that as the active layer develops turbulence, the…

Dynamic organization of the cytoskeletal filaments and rod-like proteins in the cell membrane and other biological interfaces occurs in many cellular processes. Previous modeling studies have considered the dynamics of a single rod on fluid…

We provide a minimal model for an active nematic film in contact with both a solid substrate and a passive isotropic fluid, and explore its dynamics in one and two dimensions using a combination of hybrid Lattice Boltzmann simulations and…

Engineering synthetic materials that mimic the remarkable complexity of living organisms is a fundamental challenge in science and technology. We study the spatiotemporal patterns that emerge when an active nematicfilm of microtubules and…

We investigate the transport of elastic active filaments in two-dimensional turbulence, focusing on how propulsion geometry and elasticity determine vortex trapping and transport. Using a bead-spring model with activity applied at the…