相关论文: On the interplay between activity, elasticity 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…
Cell monolayers are a central model system to tissue biophysics. In vivo, epithelial tissues are curved on the scale of microns, and curvature's role in the onset of spontaneous tissue flows is still not well-understood. Here, we present a…
Active droplets are artificial microswimmers built from a liquid dispersion by microfluidic tools and showing self-propelled motion. These systems hold particular interest for mimicking biological phenomena, such as some aspects of cell…
We numerically study the dynamics of a passive fluid droplet confined within a microchannel whose walls are covered with a thin layer of active gel. The latter represents a fluid of extensile material modelling, for example, a suspension of…
Active fluid droplets are a class of soft materials exhibiting autonomous motion sustained by an energy supply. Such systems have been shown to capture motility regimes typical of biological cells and are ideal candidates as building-block…
We develop the fundamentals of nonlinear and anisotropic bending behavior of biomimetic scale plates using a combination of analytical modeling, finite element (FE) computations, and motivational experiments. The analytical…
We derive the constitutive equations of an active polar gel from a model for the dynamics of elastic molecules that link polar elements. Molecular binding kinetics induces the fluidization of the material, giving rise to Maxwell…
Cells and tissues have the remarkable ability to actively generate the forces required to change their shape. This active mechanical behavior is largely mediated by the actin cytoskeleton, a crosslinked network of actin filaments that is…
Motivated by the motion of nematode sperm cells, we present a model for the motion of an adhesive gel on a solid substrate. The gel polymerizes at the leading edge and depolymerizes at the rear. The motion results from a competition between…
Active matter locally converts chemical energy into mechanical work and, for this reason, it provides new mechanisms of pattern formation. In particular, active gels made of protein motors and filaments are far-from-equilibrium systems that…
Drops of active liquid crystal have recently shown the ability to self-propel, which was associated with topological defects in the orientation of active filaments [Sanchez {\em et al.}, Nature {\bf 491}, 431 (2013)]. Here, we study the…
In the last years self-motile droplets attracted the attention of scientists from different fields ranging from applied biology to theoretical physics, because of their promising technological applications and important biological…
Cytoskeletal gels are engineered prototypes that mimic the contractile behavior of a cell in-vitro. They are composed of an active polymer matrix and a liquid solvent. Their contraction kinetics is governed by two dynamic phenomena:…
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…
The internal dynamics of active gels, both in artificial (in-vitro) model systems and inside the cytoskeleton of living cells, has been extensively studied by experiments of recent years. These dynamics are probed using tracer particles…
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…
Cell migration is important in many biological processes, including embryonic development, cancer metastasis, and wound healing. In these tissues, a cell's motion is often strongly constrained by its neighbors, leading to glassy dynamics.…
Liquid migration in active soft solids is a very common phenomenon in Nature at different scales: from cells to leaves. It can be caused by mechanical as well as chemical actions. The work focuses on the migration of liquid provoked by…
I put forward a continuum theory for active nematic gels, defined as fluids or suspensions of orientable rodlike objects endowed with active dynamics, that is based on symmetry arguments and compatibility with thermodynamics. The starting…
We report an experimental investigation of the spontaneous motion of liquid droplets on soft gels with a crosslinking gradient. By systematically adjusting the spatial difference in crosslinking density, we observed that millimeter-sized…