Related papers: Activity-driven polymer knotting for macromolecula…
We investigate, using numerical simulations, the conformations of isolated active ring polymers. We find that the their behaviour depends crucially on their size: short rings ($N \lesssim$ 100) are swelled whereas longer rings ($N \gtrsim$…
Materials made from active, living, or robotic components can display emergent properties arising from local sensing and computation. Here, we realize a freestanding active metabeam with piezoelectric elements and electronic feed-forward…
Stochastic simulations are used to characterize the knotting distributions of random ring polymers confined in spheres of various radii. The approach is based on the use of multiple Markov chains and reweighting techniques, combined with…
The topological properties of many materials are central to their behavior, with the dynamics of topological defects being particularly important to intrinsically out-of-equilibrium, active materials. In this paper, local manipulation of…
A flat sheet programmed with a planar pattern of spontaneous shape change will morph into a curved surface. Such metric mechanics is seen in growing biological sheets, and may be engineered in actuating soft matter sheets such as…
Active transport of biomolecules assisted by motor proteins is imperative for the proper functioning of cellular activities. Inspired by the diffusion of active agents in crowded cellular channels, we computationally investigate the…
Hollow microgels are elastic polymer shells easily realizable in experiments. Recent works have shown the emergence of buckling events in dilute hollow microgels under the effect of an added osmotic pressure. Here, we perform large-scale…
The translocation of biopolymers, such as DNA and proteins, across cellular or nuclear membranes is essential for numerous biological processes. The translocation dynamics are influenced by the properties of the polymers, such as polymer…
We propose a mechanism in which two molecular knots pass through each other and swap positions along a polymer strand. Associated free energy barriers in our simulations only amount to a few $k_{B}T$, which may enable the interchange of…
Mesh-like structures, such as mucus gel or cytoskeleton networks, are ubiquitous in biological systems. These intricate structures are composed of cross-linked, semi-flexible bio-filaments, crucial to numerous biological processes. In many…
Mixtures of microtubules and molecular motors form active materials with diverse dynamical behaviors that vary based on their constituents' molecular properties. We map the non-equilibrium phase diagram of microtubules and tip-accumulating…
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…
Recently, long and slender living worms have garnered significant interest because of their impressive ability to exhibit diverse emergent behaviors in highly entangled physical and topological conditions. These worms can form an active…
Bundles of stiff filaments are ubiquitous in the living world, found both in the cytoskeleton and in the extracellular medium. These bundles are typically held together by smaller cross-linking molecules. We demonstrate analytically,…
A construction of polytopes is given based on integers. These geometries are constructed through a mapping to pure numbers and have multiple applications, including statistical mechanics and computer science. The number form is useful in…
Active nematic systems consist of rod-like internally driven subunits that interact with one another to form large-scale coherent flows. They are important examples of far-from-equilibrium fluids, which exhibit a wealth of nonlinear…
The appealing feature of molecular electronics is the possibility of exploiting functionality built within a single molecule. This functionality can be employed, for example, for sensing or switching purposes. Thus, ideally, the associated…
This study investigated, experimentally and numerically, the fracturing behavior of thermoset polymer structures featuring cracks and sharp u-notches. It is shown that, even for cases in which the sharpness of the notch would suggest…
Polymer composites are ubiquitous in biology and industry alike, owing to their emergent desirable mechanical properties not attainable in single-species systems. At the same time, polymer topology has been shown to play a key role in…
Recent experimental observations have suggested that topological defects can facilitate the creation of sharp features in developing embryos. Whereas these observations echo established knowledge about the interplay between geometry and…