Related papers: Decision-making in light-trapped slime molds invol…
Coexistence of order and fluidity in soft matter often mimics that in biology, allowing for complex dynamics and applications like displays. In active soft matter, emergent order can arise because of such dynamics. Powered by local energy…
Transport phenomena in out-of-equilibrium systems is immensely important in a myriad of applications in biology, engineering and physics. Complex environments, such as the cytoplasm or porous media, can substantially affect the transport…
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…
How systems are endowed with migration capacity is a fascinating question with implications ranging from the design of novel active systems to the control of microbial populations. Bacteria, which can be found in a variety of environments,…
Eukaryotic cells are large enough to detect signals and then orient to them by differentiating the signal strength across the length and breadth of the cell. Amoebae, fibroblasts, neutrophils and growth cones all behave in this way. Little…
This paper presents EINCASM, a prototype system employing a novel framework for studying emergent intelligence in organisms resembling slime molds. EINCASM evolves neural cellular automata with NEAT to maximize cell growth constrained by…
Slime mould \emph{Physarum polycephalum} is a large single cell capable for distributed sensing, concurrent information processing, parallel computation and decentralised actuation. The ease of culturing and experimenting with Physarum…
Plants have developed intricate mechanisms to adapt to changing light conditions. Besides photo- and helio- tropism -- the differential growth towards light and the diurnal motion with respect to sunlight -- chloroplast motion acts as a…
The plasmodium of the slime mould Physarum polycephalum has recently received significant attention for its value as a highly malleable amorphous computing substrate. In laboratory-based experiments, micro- and nanoscale artificial circuit…
Cells control the size and organization of biomolecular condensates formed by liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS), but multiple mechanisms likely contribute to this control and remain to be fully elucidated. Here we propose a…
C. elegans locomotion is composed of switches between forward and reversal states punctuated by turns. This locomotory capability is necessary for the nematode to move towards attractive stimuli, escape noxious chemicals, and explore its…
Active matter comprises individually driven units that convert locally stored energy into mechanical motion. Interactions between driven units lead to a variety of non-equilibrium collective phenomena in active matter. One of such phenomena…
Most of us must have been fascinated by the eye catching displays of collectively moving animals. Schools of fish can move in a rather orderly fashion and then change direction amazingly abruptly. There are a huge number of further examples…
Poroelastic materials, consisting of a permeable solid matrix infiltrated with fluid, are ubiquitous in natural and engineering contexts. In poroelastic polymer solids, the elastic matrix swells to equilibrium when immersed in a solvent…
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…
A number of biological processes, such as embryo development, cancer metastasis or wound healing, rely on cells moving in concert. The mechanisms leading to the emergence of coordinated motion remain however largely unexplored. Although…
Active systems -- including sperm cells, living organisms like bacteria, fish, birds, or active soft matter systems like synthetic ''microswimmers'' -- are characterized by motility, i.e., the ability to propel using their own ''engine''.…
Membrane proteins move in heterogeneous environments with spatially (sometimes temporally) varying friction and with biochemical interactions with various partners. It is important to reliably distinguish different modes of motion to…
Living organisms are molecular systems with self-sustained dynamics via energy conversion through molecular cooperation, resulting in highly complex macroscopic behaviors. Construction of such autonomous macroscopic dynamics at a molecular…
Building mathematical models of brains is difficult because of the sheer complexity of the problem. One potential starting point is through basal cognition, which gives abstract representation of a range of organisms without central nervous…