Related papers: Active Fluid Patterning in Inhomogeneous Environme…
Mechanochemical processes on surfaces such as the cellular cortex or epithelial sheets, play a key role in determining patterns and shape changes of biological systems. To understand the complex interplay of hydrodynamics and material flows…
Controlling interfaces of phase separating fluid mixtures is key to creating diverse functional soft materials. Traditionally, this is accomplished with surface-modifying chemical agents. Using experiment and theory, we study how mechanical…
Active stresses, which are collectively generated by the motion of energy-consuming rod-like constituents, generate chaotic autonomous flows. Controlling active stresses in space and time is an essential prerequisite for controlling the…
One of the most interesting phenomena in the soft-matter realm consists in the spontaneous formation of super-molecular structures (microphases) in condition of thermodynamic equilibrium. A simple mechanism responsible for this…
Active networks made of biopolymers and motor proteins are valuable bioinspired systems that have been used in the last decades to study the cytoskeleton and its self-organization under mechanical stimulation. Different techniques are…
The interplay between active matter and its environment is central to understanding emergent behavior in biological and synthetic systems. Here, we show that coupling active nematic flows to small-amplitude deformations of a compliant…
Active materials are capable of converting free energy into mechanical work to produce autonomous motion, and exhibit striking collective dynamics that biology relies on for essential functions. Controlling those dynamics and transport in…
Biological active matter is typically tightly coupled to chemical reaction networks affecting its assembly-disassembly dynamics and stress generation. We show that localized states can emerge spontaneously if assembly of active matter is…
Animal morphogenesis often involves significant shape changes of epithelial tissue sheets. Great progress has been made in understanding the underlying cellular driving forces and their coordination through biomechanical feedback loops.…
We investigate the hydrodynamic stability and the formation of patterns in a continuum model of epithelial layers, able to account for the interplay between mechanical activity, lateral adhesion and the $6-$fold orientational order…
We perform molecular dynamics simulations to characterize the occurrence of inhomogeneous shear flows in soft jammed materials. We use rough walls to impose a simple shear flow and study the athermal motion of jammed assemblies of soft…
Active filaments, such as microtubules with attached cargo-carrying motor proteins, are important dynamic structures for fluid transport in and around living cells. The mathematical models of active filaments appearing in the literature…
We simulate the nonlocal Stokesian hydrodynamics of an elastic filament which is active due a permanent distribution of stresslets along its contour. A bending instability of an initially straight filament spontaneously breaks flow symmetry…
From cytoskeletal networks to tissues, many biological systems behave as active materials. Their composition and stress-generation is affected by chemical reaction networks. In such systems, the coupling between mechanics and chemistry…
Spontaneous pattern formation in living systems is driven by reaction-diffusion chemistry and active mechanics. The feedback between chemical and mechanical forces is often essential to robust pattern formation, yet it remains poorly…
Liquid-liquid phase separation is important across biology, physics, and materials science. Although usually studied at equilibrium, active components - such as motor proteins, enzymes, and synthetic microswimmers - are increasingly…
In active matter systems, deformable boundaries provide a mechanism to organize internal active stresses and perform work on the external environment. To study a minimal model of such a system, we perform particle-based simulations of an…
Fluid-structure interactions between active and passive components are important for many biological systems to function. A particular example is chromatin in the cell nucleus, where ATP-powered processes drive coherent motions of the…
Material renewability in active living systems, such as in cells and tissues, can drive the large-scale patterning of forces, with distinctive phenotypic consequences. This is especially significant in the cell cytoskeleton, where multiple…
Incorporating the inherent heterogeneity of living systems into models of active nematics is essential to provide a more realistic description of biological processes such as bacterial growth, cell dynamics and tissue development.…