Related papers: Active viscoelastic condensates provide controllab…

Characterizing the softness of deformable materials having partial elastic and partial viscous behaviour via soft lubrication experiments has emerged as a versatile and robust methodology in recent times. However, a straightforward…

Models of active nematics in biological systems normally require complexity arising from the hydrodynamics involved at the microscopic level as well as the viscoelastic nature of the system. Here we show that a minimal, space-independent,…

Over the last half-century, linear viscoelastic models for crack growth in soft solids have flourished but their predictions have rarely been compared to experiments. In fact, most available models are either very approximate or cast in…

Embryonic tissues deform across broad spatial and temporal scales and relax stress through active rearrangements. A quantitative link between cell-scale activity, spatial forcing, and emergent tissue-scale mechanics remains incomplete.…

Phase-separated biomolecular condensates with liquid-like properties play a key role in the organization and compartmentalization of the intracellular environment. Condensate-mediated capillary forces acting on membranes drive…

Living cells dynamically modulate the local morphologies of their actin cytoskeletons to perform biological functions, including force transduction, intracellular transport, and cell division. A major challenge is to understand how diverse…

Complex interactions between cellular systems and their surrounding extracellular matrices are emerging as important mechanical regulators of cell functions such as proliferation, motility, and cell death, and such cellular systems are…

Biomolecular condensates help organize the cell cytoplasm and nucleoplasm into spatial compartments with different chemical compositions. A key feature of such compositional patterning is the local enrichment of enzymatically active…

We study two closely related, nonlinear models of a viscoplastic solid. These models capture essential features of plasticity over a wide range of strain rates and applied stresses. They exhibit inelastic strain relaxation and steady flow…

Biomolecules composed of a limited set of chemical building blocks can co-localize into distinct, spatially segregated compartments known as biomolecular condensates. While many condensates are known to form spontaneously via phase…

The locomotion of microorganisms and spermatozoa in complex viscoelastic fluids is of critical importance in many biological processes such as fertilization, infection, and biofilm formation. Depending on their propulsion mechanisms,…

Cell walls define a cell shape in bacteria. They are rigid to resist large internal pressures, but remarkably plastic to adapt to a wide range of external forces and geometric constraints. Currently, it is unknown how bacteria maintain…

Cells regulate gene expression in part by forming DNA-protein condensates in the nucleus. While existing theories describe the equilibrium size and stability of such condensates, their dynamics remain less understood. Here, we use…

Incorporating cells within active biomaterial scaffolds is a promising strategy to develop forefront materials that can autonomously sense, respond, and alter the scaffold in response to environmental cues or internal cell circuitry. Using…

Biological growth is often driven by mechanical cues, such as changes in external pressure or tensile loading. Moreover, it is well known that many living tissues actively maintain a preferred level of mechanical internal stress, called the…

From multicellular tissues to bacterial colonies, three dimensional cellular structures arise through the interaction of cellular activities and mechanical forces. Simple bacterial communities provide model systems for analyzing such…

Growing tissue and bacterial colonies are active matter systems where cell divisions and cellular motion generate active stress. Although they operate in the non-equilibrium regime, these biological systems can form large-scale ordered…

We experimentally study the dynamics of active particles (APs) in a viscoelastic fluid under various geometrical constraints such as flat walls, spherical obstacles and cylindrical cavities. We observe that the main effect of the confined…

Constitutive equations are derived for the viscoelastic behavior of particle-reinforced rubbers at isothermal loading with finite strains. A filled rubber is thought of as a composite medium where inclusions with high and low concentrations…

Natural plants are exemplars of adaptation through self-organisation and collective decision making. As such, they provide a rich source of inspiration for adaptive mechanisms in artificial systems. Plant growth - a structure development…