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We study the activated motion of adsorbed polymers which are driven over a structured substrate by a localized point force.Our theory applies to experiments with single polymers using, for example, tips of scanning force microscopes to drag…
We analyze experimentally the shape of a long elastic filament rotating in a viscous liquid. We identify a continuous but sharp transition from a straight to an helical shape, resulting from the competition between viscous stresses and…
Reptation theory has been highly successful in explaining the unusual material properties of entangled polymer solutions. It reduces the complex many-body dynamics to a single-polymer description where each polymer is envisaged to be…
We analyze the nonequilibrium dynamics of single inextensible semiflexible biopolymers as stretching forces are applied at the ends. Based on different (contradicting) heuristic arguments, various scaling laws have been proposed for the…
The cytoskeleton of eukaryotic cells provides mechanical support and governs intracellular transport. These functions rely on the complex mechanical properties of networks of semiflexible protein filaments. Recent theoretical interest has…
Any macroscopic deformation of a filamentous bundle is necessarily accompanied by local sliding and/or stretching of the constituent filaments. Yet the nature of the sliding friction between two aligned filaments interacting through…
Effective mixing of fluids at the microfluidic scale is important for future applications in biology, medicine, and chemistry. A promising type of micromixers are magnetic filaments, which can be activated by an external magnetic field.…
Cytoskeletal filaments transported by surface immobilized molecular motors with one end pinned to the surface have been observed to spiral in a myosin-driven actin 'gliding assay'. The radius of the spiral was shown to scale with motor…
The macroscopic properties of polymeric fluids are inherited from the material properties of the fibers embedded in the solvent. The behavior of such passive fibers in flow has been of interest in a wide range of systems, including cellular…
Bundles of filamentous polymers are primary structural components of a broad range of cytoskeletal structures, and their mechanical properties play key roles in cellular functions ranging from locomotion to mechanotransduction and…
The dynamics of a stiff filament (made by connecting beads) embedded in size-polydisperse hard sphere fluid is investigated by means of molecular dynamics simulations with focus on how the degree of size-polydispersity, characterized by…
Active bodies in viscous fluids interact hydrodynamically through self-generated flows. Here we study spontaneous aggregation induced by hydrodynamic flow in a suspension of stiff, apolar, active filaments. Lateral hydrodynamic attractions…
We develop a novel biased Monte-Carlo simulation technique to measure the force-extension curves and the distribution function of the extension of fluctuating filaments stretched by external force. The method is applicable for arbitrary…
We study the segregation of motile semiflexible filaments from a background of similar but non-motile filaments. Our Langevin dynamics simulations reveal a wide range of emergent structures governed by filament flexibility and activity,…
We use optical trapping to continuously bend an isolated microtubule while simultaneously measuring the applied force and the resulting filament strain, thus allowing us to determine its elastic properties over a wide range of applied…
We investigate the trajectories of rigid fibers as they are transported in a pressure-driven flow, at low Reynolds number, in shallow Hele Shaw cells. The transverse confinement and the resulting viscous friction on these elongated objects,…
Semi-flexible polymers in crowded environments exhibit complex dynamics that play a crucial role in various biological and material design processes. Based on the classic reptation theory, it is generally believed that semiflexible polymers…
Soft slender structures are ubiquitous in natural and artificial systems and can be observed at scales that range from the nanometric to the kilometric, from polymers to space tethers. We present a practical numerical approach to simulate…
Every animal cell is filled with a cytoskeleton, a dynamic gel made of inextensible fibers, such as microtubules, actin fibers, and intermediate filaments, all suspended in a viscous fluid. Numerical simulation of this gel is challenging…
We examine the nonequilibrium production of topological defects -- braids -- in semiflexible filament bundles under cycles of compression and tension. During these cycles, the period of compression facilitates the thermally activated pair…