Related papers: Active drive towards elastic spinodals
Depinning and nonequilibrium transitions within sliding states in systems driven over quenched disorder arise across a wide spectrum of size scales ranging from atomic friction at the nanoscale, flux motion in type-II superconductors at the…
Active networks made of biopolymers and motor proteins are valuable bioinspired systems that have been used in the last decades to study the cytoskeleton and its self-organization under mechanical stimulation. Different techniques are…
Actomyosin networks are major structural components of the cell. They provide mechanical integrity and allow dynamic remodeling of eukaryotic cells, self-organizing into the diverse patterns essential for development. We provide a…
Active solids consume energy to allow for actuation, shape change, and wave propagation not possible in equilibrium. Whereas active interfaces have been realized across many experimental systems, control of three-dimensional (3D) bulk…
The actin cytoskeleton is an active semi-flexible polymer network whose non-equilibrium properties coordinate both stable and contractile behaviors to maintain or change cell shape. While myosin motors drive the actin cytoskeleton…
Many types of mammalian cells exert active contractile forces and mechanically deform their elastic substrate, to accomplish biological functions such as cell migration. These substrate deformations provide a mechanism by which cells can…
Adhesion-independent migration is a prominent mode of cell motility in confined environments, yet the physical principles that guide such movement remain incompletely understood. We present a phase-field model for simulating the motility of…
Living materials such as membranes, cytoskeletal assemblies, cell collectives and tissues can often be described as active solids -- materials that are energized from within, with elastic response about a well defined reference…
Active colloids and externally actuated semi-flexible filaments provide basic building blocks for designing autonomously motile micro-machines. Here, we show that a passive semi-flexible filament can be actuated and transported by attaching…
Fluid-structure interactions between active and passive components are important for many biological systems to function. A particular example is chromatin in the cell nucleus, where ATP-powered processes drive coherent motions of the…
Active matter research focuses on the emergent behavior among interacting self-propelled particles. Unification of seemingly disconnected paradigms -- active phase-separation of repulsive discs and collective motion of self-propelled rods…
The term active matter describes diverse systems, spanning macroscopic (e.g. shoals of fish and flocks of birds) to microscopic scales (e.g. migrating cells, motile bacteria and gels formed through the interaction of nanoscale molecular…
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…
The past two decades have seen a remarkable progress in the development of synthetic colloidal agents which are capable of creating directed motion in an unbiased environment at the microscale. These self-propelling particles are often…
Active particles contain internal degrees of freedom with the ability to take in and dissipate energy and, in the process, execute systematic movement. Examples include all living organisms and their motile constituents such as molecular…
Many biological processes are supported by special molecules, called motor proteins or molecular motors, that transport cellular cargoes along linear protein filaments and can reversibly associate to their tracks. Stimulated by these…
Many living and artificial systems show a similar emergent behavior and collective motions on different scales, starting from swarms of bacteria to synthetic active particles, herds of mammals and crowds of people. What all these systems…
A constitutive relation between stress and strain relative to a reference state is the basic assumption of elasticity theory. However, in living matter, force generation is governed by motor molecule activity, which does not depend on…
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…
A paradigm for internally driven matter is the active nematic liquid crystal, whereby the equations of a conventional nematic are supplemented by a minimal active stress that violates time reversal symmetry. In practice, active fluids may…