Related papers: Living Capillary Bridges
The transport of individual entities through interconnected structures is a process of practical relevance both in biology and technology. Examples are given by diffusive dynamics of molecules in porous structures. In soft environments,…
Collective motion of self-propelled organisms or synthetic particles often termed active fluid has attracted enormous attention in broad scientific community because of it fundamentally non-equilibrium nature. Energy input and interactions…
Recent work on particle-based models of tissues has suggested that any finite rate of cell division and cell death is sufficient to fluidize an epithelial tissue. At the same time, experimental evidence has indicated the existence of glassy…
In these Lecture Notes we aim at clarifying how soft matter physics, and herein notably statistical mechanics and fluid mechanics, can be engaged to understand and manipulate non-equilibrium systems consisting of numerous (microscopic)…
Soft matters whose constituents are deformable are ubiquitous in nature especially in biological systems-including cells and their organelles-as well as in foams and emulsions. The capacity for deformation in these soft materials gives rise…
One problem of non-crystalline condensed matter (soft matter) is creating the right equilibrium between elasticity and viscosity, referred to as viscoelasticity. Manifestations of that can be found in everyday live, where the…
In processes such as embryo shaping, wound healing, and malignant cell invasion, epithelial cells transition between dispersed phases, where the cells move independently, and condensed phases, where they aggregate and deform to close gaps,…
Active matter exhibits striking behaviour reminiscent of living matter and molecular fluids, and has promising applications in drug delivery or mixing at the micron scale. Active colloidal systems provide important models with simple and…
Water molecules play an important role in providing unique environments for biological reactions on cell membranes. It is widely believed that water molecules form bridges that connect lipid molecules and stabilize cell membranes. Using…
We simulate binary soft disk systems in two dimensions, and investigate how the dynamics slow as the area fraction is increased toward the glass transition. The "fragility" quantifies how sensitively the relaxation time scale depends on the…
Migratory and tissue resident cells exhibit highly branched morphologies to perform their function and to adapt to the microenvironment. Immune cells, for example, display transient branched shapes while exploring the surrounding tissues.…
The present work presents a density-functional microscopic model of soft biological tissue. The model was based on a prototype molecular structure from experimentally resolved collagen peptide residues and water clusters and has the…
Molecular dynamics simulations have been performed on pure liquid water, aqueous solutions of sodium chloride, and polymer solutions exposed to a strong external electric field with the goal to gain molecular insight into the structural…
We investigate the evolution of a system of colloidal particles, trapped at a fluid interface and interacting via capillary attraction, as function of the range of the capillary interaction and temperature. We address the collapse of an…
Hypothesis: Droplet coalescence process is important in many applications and has been studied extensively when two droplets are surrounded by gas. However, the coalescence dynamics would be different when the two droplets are surrounded by…
A motile cell, when stimulated, shows a dramatic increase in the activity of its membrane, manifested by the appearance of dynamic membrane structures such as lamellipodia, filopodia and membrane ruffles. The external stimulus turns on…
Motile living organisms routinely probe their surroundings to adapt in ever-evolving environments. Although synthetic microswimmers offer surrogates for self-propelled living entities, they often lack the complex feedback mechanisms that…
Surface-driven flows are ubiquitous in nature, from subcellular cytoplasmic streaming to organ-scale ciliary arrays. Here, we model how confined geometries can be used to engineer complex hydrodynamic patterns driven by activity prescribed…
A simple model of an active colloid consisting of dumbbell-shaped particles that cyclically change their length without propelling themselves is proposed and analyzed. At nanoscales, it represents an idealization for bacterial cytoplasm or…
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…