Related papers: Self-enhanced mobility enables vortex pattern form…
Coherent vortical motion has been reported in a wide variety of populations including living organisms (bacteria, fishes, human crowds) and synthetic active matter (shaken grains, mixtures of biopolymers), yet a unified description of the…
Despite their inherent non-equilibrium nature, living systems can self-organize in highly ordered collective states that share striking similarities with the thermodynamic equilibrium phases of conventional condensed matter and fluid…
Motility is a fundamental survival strategy of bacteria to navigate porous environments. Swimming cells thrive in quiescent wetlands and sediments at the bottom of the marine water column, where they mediate many essential biogeochemical…
Spatial organisation is a hallmark of all living cells, and recreating it in model systems is a necessary step in the creation of synthetic cells. It is therefore of both fundamental and practical interest to better understand the basic…
Active systems, from bacterial suspensions to cellular monolayers, are continuously driven out of equilibrium by local injection of energy from their constituent elements and exhibit turbulent-like and chaotic patterns. Here we demonstrate…
Formation of spatial patterns of cells is a recurring theme in biology and often depends on regulated cell motility. Motility of M. xanthus depends on two motility machineries: the S-engine and A-engine. Moving M. xanthus cells can organize…
Ensembles of particles rotating in a two-dimensional fluid can exhibit chaotic dynamics yet develop signatures of hidden order. Such "rotors" are found in the natural world spanning vastly disparate length scales - from the rotor proteins…
Bacteria can form a great variety of spatially heterogeneous cell density patterns, ranging from simple concentric rings to dynamical spiral waves appearing in growing colonies. These pattern formation phenomena are important as they…
Non-reciprocal interactions fueled by local energy consumption can be found in biological and synthetic active matter at scales where viscoelastic forces are important. Such systems can be described by "odd" viscoelasticity, which assumes…
Bacteria commonly live in structured communities that affect human health and influence ecological systems. Heterogeneous populations, such as motile and non-motile populations, often coexist in bacteria communities. Motile subpopulations…
Biological systems exhibit large-scale self-organized dynamics and structures which enable organisms to perform the functions of life. The field of active matter strives to develop and understand microscopically-driven nonequilibrium…
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…
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…
We propose and study a hydrodynamic model for pattern formation in mixtures of molecular motors and microtubules. The steady state patterns we obtain in different regimes of parameter space include arrangements of vortices and asters…
Robust self-organization of subcellular structures is a key principle governing the dynamics and evolution of cellular life. In fission yeast cells undergoing division, the mitotic spindle spontaneously emerges from the interaction of…
Protein pattern formation is essential for the spatial organization of many intracellular processes like cell division, flagellum positioning, and chemotaxis. A prominent example of intracellular patterns are the oscillatory pole-to-pole…
Spatial self-organization emerges in distributed systems exhibiting local interactions when nonlinearities and the appropriate propagation of signals are at work. These kinds of phenomena can be modeled with different frameworks, typically…
Controlling the phases of matter is a challenge that spans from condensed materials to biological systems. Here, by imposing a geometric boundary condition, we study controlled collective motion of Escherichia coli bacteria. A circular…
When interacting motile units self-organize into flocks, they realize one of the most robust ordered state found in nature. However, after twenty five years of intense research, the very mechanism controlling the ordering dynamics of both…
Inspired by the Turing mechanism for pattern formation, we propose a simple self-propelled particle model with short-ranged alignment and anti-alignment at larger distances. It is able to produce orientationally ordered states, periodic…