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Register a new userStratification, multivalency and turnover of the active cortical machinery are required for steady active contractile flows at the cell surface
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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.
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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.
We investigate the swim pressure exerted by non-chiral and chiral active particles on convex or concave circular boundaries. Active particles are modeled as non-interacting and non-aligning self-propelled Brownian particles. The convex and concave circular boundaries are used as models representing a fixed inclusion immersed in an active bath and a cavity (or container) enclosing the active particles, respectively. We first present a detailed analysis of the role of convex versus concave boundary curvature and of the chirality of active particles on their spatial distribution, chirality-induced currents, and the swim pressure they exert on the bounding surfaces. The results will then be used to predict the mechanical equilibria of suspended fluid enclosures (generically referred to as droplets) in a bulk with active particles being present either inside the bulk fluid or within the suspended droplets. We show that, while droplets containing active particles and suspended in a normal bulk behave in accordance with standard capillary paradigms, those containing a normal fluid exhibit anomalous behaviors when suspended in an active bulk. In the latter case, the excess swim pressure results in non-monotonic dependence of the inside droplet pressure on the droplet radius. As a result, we find a regime of anomalous capillarity for a single droplet, where the inside droplet pressure increases upon increasing the droplet size. In the case of two interconnected droplets, we show that mechanical equilibrium can occur also when they have different sizes. We further identify a regime of anomalous ripening, where two unequal-sized droplets can reach a final state of equal sizes upon interconnection, in stark contrast with the standard Ostwald ripening phenomenon, implying shrinkage of the smaller droplet in favor of the larger one.
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.
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 $d>2$.
The shear-induced reversible self-organization of active rotors into strip-like aggregates is studied by carrying out computational simulations. The numerical and theoretical results demonstrate that the average width of the strips is linearly dependent on the relative intensity of active torque to the shear rate of the imposed flow. In the particle strips, edge flows are observed to be against the imposed flow and play a crucial role to maintain the stability of the strips. Additionally, the rheological result shows the dependence of shear and rotational viscosities on the active torque direction and the oddness of normal stress response. By exhibiting a novel collective phenomenon of active rotors, our study paves the way of understanding the chiral active matter.
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