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Register a new userThe 2019 Motile Active Matter Roadmap
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Activity and autonomous motion are fundamental in living and engineering systems. This has stimulated the new field of active matter in recent years, which focuses on the physical aspects of propulsion mechanisms, and on motility-induced emergent collective behavior of a larger number of identical agents. The scale of agents ranges from nanomotors and microswimmers, to cells, fish, birds, and people. Inspired by biological microswimmers, various designs of autonomous synthetic nano- and micromachines have been proposed. Such machines provide the basis for multifunctional, highly responsive, intelligent (artificial) active materials, which exhibit emergent behavior and the ability to perform tasks in response to external stimuli. A major challenge for understanding and designing active matter is their inherent nonequilibrium nature due to persistent energy consumption, which invalidates equilibrium concepts such as free energy, detailed balance, and time-reversal symmetry. Unraveling, predicting, and controlling the behavior of active matter is a truly interdisciplinary endeavor at the interface of biology, chemistry, ecology, engineering, mathematics, and physics. The vast complexity of phenomena and mechanisms involved in the self-organization and dynamics of motile active matter comprises a major challenge. Hence, to advance, and eventually reach a comprehensive understanding, this important research area requires a concerted, synergetic approach of the various disciplines.
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We present a theory for the interaction between motile particles in an elastic medium on a substrate, relying on two arguments: a moving particle creates a strikingly fore-aft asymmetric distortion in the elastic medium; this strain field reorients other particles. We show that this leads to sensing, attraction and pursuit, with a non-reciprocal character, between a pair of motile particles. We confirm the predicted distortion fields and non-mutual trail-following in our experiments and simulations on polar granular rods made motile by vibration, moving through a dense monolayer of beads in its crystalline phase. Our theory should be of relevance to the interaction of motile cells in the extracellular matrix or in a supported layer of gel or tissue.
We report flocking in the dry active granular matter of millimeter-sized two-step-tapered rods without an intervening medium. The system undergoes the flocking phase transition at a threshold area fraction ~ 0.12 having high orientational correlations between the particles. However, the one-step-tapered rods do not flock and are used as the motile dissenters in the flock-forming granular matter. At the critical fraction of dissenters ~ 0.3, the flocking order of the system gets completely destroyed. The variance of the systems order parameter shows a maximum near the dissenter fraction f ~ 0.05, suggesting a finite-size crossover between the ordered and disordered phases.
We study universal behavior in the moving phase of a generic system of motile particles with alignment interactions in the incompressible limit for spatial dimensions $d>2$. Using a dynamical renormalization group analysis, we obtain the exact dynamic, roughness, and anisotropy exponents that describe the scaling behavior of such incompressible systems. This is the first time a compelling argument has been given for the exact values of the anomalous scaling exponents of a flock moving through an isotropic medium in $d>2$.
Many cell membrane proteins that bind to actin form dynamic clusters driven by contractile flows generated by the actomyosin machinery at the cell cortex. Recent evidence suggests that a necessary condition for the generation of these protein clusters on the membrane is the stratified organization of the active agents -formin-nucleated actin, myosin-II minifilaments, and ARP2/3-nucleated actin mesh -within the cortex. Further, the observation that these clusters dynamically remodel, requires that the components of this active machinery undergo turnover. Here we develop a coarse-grained agent-based Brownian dynamics simulation that incorporates the effects of stratification, binding of myosin minifilaments to multiple actin filaments and their turnover. We show that these three features of the active cortical machinery -stratification, multivalency and turnover -are critical for the realisation of a nonequilibrium steady state characterised by contractile flows and dynamic orientational patterning. We show that this nonequilibrium steady state enabled by the above features of the cortex, can facilitate multi-particle encounters of membrane proteins that profoundly influence the kinetics of bimolecular reactions at the cell surface.
Recent experimental studies have demonstrated that cellular motion can be directed by topographical gradients, such as those resulting from spatial variations in the features of a micropatterned substrate. This phenomenon, known as topotaxis, is especially prominent among cells persistently crawling within a spatially varying distribution of cell-sized obstacles. In this article we introduce a toy model of topotaxis based on active Brownian particles constrained to move in a lattice of obstacles, with space-dependent lattice spacing. Using numerical simulations and analytical arguments, we demonstrate that topographical gradients introduce a spatial modulation of the particles persistence, leading to directed motion toward regions of higher persistence. Our results demonstrate that persistent motion alone is sufficient to drive topotaxis and could serve as a starting point for more detailed studies on self-propelled particles and cells.
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