Nature Physics - Cytoplasmic flows in the fruit fly oocyte can reorganize cellular components. These structured vortical flows arise through self-organizing dynamics of microtubules, molecular...

Nature - We demonstrate that self-enhanced mobility offers a simple physical mechanism for pattern formation in living systems and, more generally, in other active matter systems near the boundary...

Nature Physics - The occurrence of propagating spiral waves in multicellular organisms is associated with key biological functions. Now this type of wave has also been observed in dense bacterial...

Communications Physics - Environmental factors such as mechanical stresses govern the cellular behavior and physiology, but the role of selfinduced biomechanical stresses in growing bacterial...

Nature Communications - When studying nematic ordering of cells in a monolayer, it is commonly assumed that the principal stress and cell shape axes are tightly coupled. Here, the authors measure...

Nature Physics - A continuum active solid system is realized in a bacterial biofilm. Self-sustained elastic waves are observed, and two modes of collective motion with a sharp transition between...

Tissue flow during morphogenesis is commonly driven by local constriction of cell cortices, which is caused by the activation of actomyosin contrac...

We analyze a dilute suspension of active particles confined between walls and subjected to fields that can modulate particle speed as well as orientation. Generally, the particle distribution is...

Living active collectives have evolved with remarkable self-patterning capabilities to adapt to the physical and biological constraints crucial for their growth and survival. However, the intricate...

Topological defects play a central role in the physics of many materials, including magnets, superconductors, and liquid crystals. In active fluids...

Nature Physics - Coherent motion of cells plays an important role in morphogenesis. Experiments with cellular rings, supported by numerical simulations, suggest that cell polarity and acto-myosin...

Cell sorting, the segregation of cells with different properties into distinct domains, is a key phenomenon in biological processes such as embryogenesis. We use a phase-field model of a confluent...

Flow pathlengths non-monotonically control swimmer dispersion and provide optimal transport strategies in time-periodic flows.

Nature Physics - Experiments with active colloidal fluids in large-scale hydraulic networks reveal a connection between emergent flows and dynamical spin-ice patterns.

Nature Materials - Production of bulk bicontinuous materials is limited by the ability to make uniform microarchitectures across large volumes. Here elastic microphase separation is used to...

Nature Physics - Wrinkling of cell nuclei is associated with disease. During development, the nucleus behaves like a sheet of paper and the wrinkling amplitude can be manipulated without changing...

Communications Physics - Migration is one of the hallmarks of biological cells and often results from intracellular flows caused by contractility gradients. Here the authors theoretically analyze...

Topological defects in nematically aligned cell populations play a critical role in modulating collective motion, ranging from microbial colonies to epithelial tissues. Despite the potential of...

A review discusses how interactions between fibers in plant cell walls can lead to the generation of complex tissue shapes.

Nature Communications - Thin crystals grown on rigid spherical templates of increasing curvature exhibit increased protrusions. Here, the authors demonstrate the opposite curvature effect on the...

Nature Materials - The rational design of out-of-equilibrium demixing transitions remains challenging. Active fluids are used to control the liquid–liquid phase separation of passive DNA...

Plants have developed intricate mechanisms to adapt to changing light conditions. Besides phototropism and heliotropism (differential growth toward...

Proliferation and annihilation of vortex-antivortex pairs orchestrate collective cell migration in epithelia.

Recent advances in high-resolution imaging techniques and particle-based simulation methods have enabled the precise microscopic characterization o...

Using a multi-phase field model, we examine how particle deformability, which is a proxy for cell stiffness, affects motility induced phase separation (MIPS). We show that purely repulsive deformab...

Nature Communications - In 1952, Turing unlocked the reaction-diffusion basis of natural patterns, such as zebra stripes. The authors propose a reaction-diffusion model that recreates...

Everyday experience confirms the tendency of adhesive films to detach from spheroidal regions of rigid substrates—what is a petty frustration when ...

Nature Communications - Earlier research has shown that controlling activity in the active matter can lead to either a phase change or a laminar-turbulent transition in active fluids. Authors...

Nature Communications - The mechanical forces exerted by active fluids may provide an effective way of transporting microscopic objects, but the details remain elusive. Using space modulated...

Nature Materials - Defects of a passive nematic liquid crystal made from actin filaments pattern the collective behaviour of active microtubules, creating macroscopic polar patterns and chiral loops.

Collective movement and organization of cell monolayers are important for wound healing and tissue development. Recent experiments highlighted the ...

Nature Communications - Collective motion arises from the coordination of individuals and entails the adjustment of their respective velocities. Yet, how individuals achieve this coordination is...

Epithelial monolayers are a central building block of complex organisms. Topological defects have emerged as important elements for single cell behavior in flat epithelia. Here we theoretically...

We present a direct derivation of the typical time derivatives used in a continuum description of complex fluid flows, harnessing the principles of the kinematics of line elements. The evolution of...

Directed flows of cells in vivo are essential in morphogenesis. They shape living matter in phenomena involving cell mechanics and regulations of the acto-myosin cytoskeleton. However the onset of...

An important microphysical mechanism for biological pattern formation including vertebrae skin patterns is uncovered.

Nature Physics - Cell division is governed by the positioning of a cytoskeletal structure called the spindle. Two methods, one based on laser ablation and the other on fluid flow assessments, are...

Nature Physics - Active flows in biological systems swirl. A coupling between active flows, elongated deformations and defect dynamics helps preserve self-organised structures against disordered...

Nature - Using micropipette aspiration on donated human embryos, cell surface tensions during compaction were mapped, indicating a role for defective cell contractility in poor quality embryos.

Nature Communications - It is unclear why flying insects congregate around artificial light sources. Here, the authors use high-speed videography and motion-capture, finding that insects fly...

An efficient approach for simulating deformable cells reveals a fluid-to-fluid transition in monolayer cell populations.

This article explores how the relative strength of chemical signaling and mechanical forces drive a transition from a uniform active glass to periodic spatiotemporal waves, contributing to a compre...

Nature Communications - In this work, the authors report the appearance of vacuoles within the droplets of an enzyme-driven biomolecular liquid. The mechanisms of these behaviors are quantitatively...

Nature Physics - Colloidal aggregates are conventionally formed by particle aggregation under thermal fluctuation. Now the structure and mechanical properties of aggregates can be controlled by an...

Many bacterial species are helical in shape, including the widespread pathogen H. pylori. Motivated by recent experiments on H. pylori showing that cell wall synthesis is not uniform [J. A. Taylor,...

Recent experimental observations have suggested that topological defects can facilitate the creation of sharp features in developing embryos. Whereas these observations echo established knowledge...

Active nematics are dense systems of rodlike particles that consume energy to drive motion at the level of the individual particles. They exist in natural systems like biological tissues and artifi...

A topological metric framework makes it possible to compare biological, physical and astronomical systems.

Nature Communications - In this work, the authors investigated on the interaction of biomolecular condensates with membranes and report that they can exhibit two wetting transitions modulated by...

The self-organization of stem cells (SCs) constitutes the fundamental basis of the development of biological organs and structures. SC-driven patterns are essential for tissue engineering, yet...

Calculations of the minimum energy a cell requires to transmit a signal between two internal components could help scientists understand how energy and information combine to produce living systems.

Lab experiments and theoretical models elucidate how chains of light-harvesting bacteria assemble into various density-dependent structures.

Nature - Turbulent energy cascades can be arrested by non-dissipative viscosities, resulting in pattern formation at intermediate length scales.

We study a system consisting of a few self-propelled particles (SPPs) placed among a crowd of densely packed granular particles that are vertically vibrated in a two-dimensional circular confinement....

Nature Communications - Electrical stimulation of hollow, 3D kidney tissues causes these tissues to inflate and change shape. The authors call this process electro-inflation and connect it to...

Biased locomotion is a common feature of microorganisms, but little is known about its impact on self-organization. Inspired by recent experiments showing a transition to large-scale flows, we study...

We perform numerical simulations of active ideal and self-avoiding tethered membranes. Passive ideal membranes with bending interactions are known to exhibit a continuous crumpling transition between...

Nature Communications - The fluctuating dynamics of a passive object suspended in an active fluid can provide fundamental insight into the fundamental non-equilibrium behavior of the fluid. Singh...

Communications Physics - Active matter is a non-equilibrium system exhibiting collective behaviour and can be used to describe a wide range of biological phenomena from groups of cells to flocks of...

The entropy production rate is determined from the variances of the position and forces applied to a system of particles.

Physical interfaces widely exist in nature and engineering. Although the formation of passive interfaces is well elucidated, the physical principle...

Wound healing in epithelial tissues is investigated using discrete-element-method simulations of the deformable particle model. Differences in the cell shape distributions and healing rates among...

A physics-informed data driven method constructs a complete model of an experimental active nematic system.

Recently, long and slender living worms have garnered significant interest because of their impressive ability to exhibit diverse emergent behaviors in highly entangled physical and topological...

This research reveals that living particle aggregates rotate spontaneously due to defect formation and identifies a critical droplet size where order evolves into turbulence, as observed in experim...

Endothelial cells spontaneously form a right-handed helix of biasedly aligned cells, driven by intrinsic cellular handedness.

Many critical biological processes, like wound healing, require confluent cell monolayers/bulk tissues to transition from a jammed solid-like to a fluid-like state. Although numerical studies...