Related papers: Density and shape govern the dynamical self-organi…

Engineering synthetic materials that mimic the remarkable complexity of living organisms is a fundamental challenge in science and technology. We study the spatiotemporal patterns that emerge when an active nematicfilm of microtubules and…

Active emulsions and liquid crystalline shells are intriguing and experimentally realisable types of topological matter. Here we numerically study the morphology and spatiotemporal dynamics of a double emulsion, where one or two passive…

We present a generic framework for modelling three-dimensional deformable shells of active matter that captures the orientational dynamics of the active particles and hydrodynamic interactions on the shell and with the surrounding…

Biological cells can actively tune their intracellular architecture according to their overall shape. Here we explore the rheological implication of such coupling in a minimal model of a dense cellular material where each cell exerts an…

Morphogenesis of living systems involves topological shape transformations which are highly unusual in the inanimate world. Here we demonstrate that a droplet of a nematic liquid crystal changes its equilibrium shape from a simply-connected…

Using agent-based simulations of self-propelled particles subject to short-range repulsion and nematic alignment we explore the dynamical phases of a dense active material confined to the surface of a sphere. We map the dynamical phase…

The topological properties of many materials are central to their behavior, with the dynamics of topological defects being particularly important to intrinsically out-of-equilibrium, active materials. In this paper, local manipulation of…

We consider a phase-separating mixture of active and passive fluids and explore morphological asymmetries of the emerging dominantly bicontinous dynamic emulsion. Two-dimensional numerical simulations reveal that the geometric and…

Active forces occurring within cells can drive crucial biological processes that involve spontaneous organization and shape change, such as cell division. Motivated by recent in vitro experiments of nematic droplets of cytoskeletal…

We study the spatiotemporal patterns that emerge when an active nematic film is topologically constraint. These topological constraints allow to control the non-equilibrium dynamics of the active system. We consider ellipsoidal shapes for…

The emergence of nematic order on deformable closed surfaces plays a pivotal role in the morphogenesis of active biological matter, such as the regeneration of Hydra. In this work, we present a continuum model that couples the…

Biological tissues exhibit diverse mechanical and rheological behaviors during morphogenesis. While much is known about tissue phase transitions controlled by structural order and cell mechanics, key questions regarding how tissue-scale…

Topological defects play a prominent role in the physics of two-dimensional materials. When driven out of equilibrium in active nematics, disclinations can acquire spontaneous self-propulsion and drive self-sustained flows upon…

In pulsating active matter, topological defects are motile despite the absence of any macroscopic flows and microscopic self-propulsion. We reveal that this motility arises from a ratchet effect: the mechanochemical coupling between local…

Morphological trends in growing colonies of living cells are at the core of physiological and evolutionary processes. Using active gel equations, which include cell division, we show that shape changes during the growth can be regulated by…

We present a hydrodynamic model for a thin spherical shell of active nematic liquid crystal with an arbitrary configuration of defects. The active flows generated by defects in the director lead to the formation of stable vortices,…

The autonomous motion of liquid crystal oil droplets in micellar media arises from spontaneous breaking of time reversal symmetry via nonlinear coupling between Marangoni stresses and surfactant transport. While this phenomenon has been…

Active matter is characterized by its ability to induce motion by self-generated stress. In the case of a solid, such motion can lead to shape transformations. The stress-generating components can be anisotropic endowing the material with…

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…

Active processes drive and guide biological dynamics across scales -- from subcellular cytoskeletal remodelling, through tissue development in embryogenesis, to population-level bacterial colonies expansion. In each of these, biological…