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The propulsion and acceleration of nanoparticles with light have both fundamental and applied significance across many disciplines. Needle-free injection of biomedical nano cargoes into living tissues is among the examples. Here we explore…
Concentrated suspensions of swimming microorganisms and other forms of active matter are known to display complex, self-organized spatio-temporal patterns on scales large compared to those of the individual motile units. Despite intensive…
Bacterial cellulose biofilms are complex networks of strong interwoven nanofibers that control transport and protect bacterial colonies in the film. Design of diverse applications of bacterial cellulose films also relies on understanding…
Microbubbles excited by acoustic fields inside water oscillate, and generate acoustic radiation forces and drag-induced acoustic streaming. These forces can be harnessed in various biomedical applications such as targeted drug delivery and…
Many bacteria live in natural and clinical environments with abundant macromolecular polymers. Macromolecular fluids commonly display viscoelasticity and non-Newtonian rheological behavior; it is unclear how these complex-fluid properties…
Entry of micro- or nano-sized objects into cells or vesicles made of lipid membranes occur in many processes such as entry of viruses in host cells, microplastics pollution, drug delivery or biomedical imaging. Here, we investigated the…
Flexible photonics offers the possibility to realize wearable sensors by bridging the advantages of flexible materials and photonic sensing elements. Recently, optical resonators have emerged as a tool to improve its over sensitivity by…
Microorganism motility often takes place within complex, viscoelastic fluid environments, e.g., sperm in cervicovaginal mucus and bacteria in biofilms. In such complex fluids, strains and stresses generated by the microorganism are stored…
The backswimmer fly is an aquatic insect, capable of regulating its buoyancy underwater. Its abdomen is covered with hemoglobin cells, used to bind and release oxygen, reversibly. Upon entering water, the fly entraps an air bubble in a…
Directed collective cell migration is central in morphogenesis, wound healing and cancer progression1,2. Although it is well-accepted that the molecular anisotropy of the micro-environment guides this migration3,4, its impact on the pattern…
Effective intracellular delivery is essential for successful gene editing of cells. Spatially selective delivery to cells that is simultaneously precise, consistent, and non-destructive remains challenging using conventional…
The recent interest in using microorganisms for biofuels is motivation enough to study bioconvection and cell dispersion in tubes subject to imposed flow. To optimize light and nutrient uptake, many microorganisms swim in directions biased…
Herein, self-healing small-scale swimmers capable of autonomous propulsion and on-the-fly structural recovery are described. The new strategy instantaneously restores the functionality of the swimmer after it has suffered severe damage.…
Strong optical forces with minimal spontaneous emission are desired for molecular deceleration and atom interferometry applications. We report experimental benchmarking of such a stimulated optical force driven by ultrafast laser pulses. We…
Microelectromagnet devices, a ring trap and a matrix, were developed for the microscopic control of biological systems. The ring trap is a circular Au wire with an insulator on top. The matrix has two arrays of straight Au wires, one array…
We outline a concept of self-assembled soft matter devices based on micro-fluidics, which use surfactant bilayer membranes as their main building blocks, arrested in geometric structures provided by top-down lithography. Membranes form…
With exquisite precision and reproducibility, cells orchestrate the cooperative action of thousands of nanometer-sized molecular motors to carry out mechanical tasks at much larger length scales, such as cell motility, division and…
We discuss a theoretical model for bidirectional cargo transport in biological cells, which is driven by teams of molecular motors and subject to thermal fluctuations. The model describes explicitly the directed motion of the molecular…
We propose an alternative mechanism for intracellular cargo transport which results from motor induced longitudinal fluctuations of cytoskeletal microtubules (MT). The longitudinal fluctuations combined with transient cargo binding to the…
Photomechanical liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are responsive polymers that can convert light directly into mechanical deformation. This unique feature makes these materials an attractive candidate for soft actuators capable of remote and…