Controlling organization and forces in active matter through optically defined boundaries

Tyler D. Ross (), Heun Jin Lee, Zijie Qu, Rachel A. Banks, Rob Phillips and Matt Thomson ()
Additional contact information
Tyler D. Ross: California Institute of Technology
Heun Jin Lee: California Institute of Technology
Zijie Qu: California Institute of Technology
Rachel A. Banks: California Institute of Technology
Rob Phillips: California Institute of Technology
Matt Thomson: California Institute of Technology

Nature, 2019, vol. 572, issue 7768, 224-229

Abstract: Abstract Living systems are capable of locomotion, reconfiguration and replication. To perform these tasks, cells spatiotemporally coordinate the interactions of force-generating, ‘active’ molecules that create and manipulate non-equilibrium structures and force fields of up to millimetre length scales1–3. Experimental active-matter systems of biological or synthetic molecules are capable of spontaneously organizing into structures4,5 and generating global flows6–9. However, these experimental systems lack the spatiotemporal control found in cells, limiting their utility for studying non-equilibrium phenomena and bioinspired engineering. Here we uncover non-equilibrium phenomena and principles of boundary-mediated control by optically modulating structures and fluid flow in an engineered system of active biomolecules. Our system consists of purified microtubules and light-activatable motor proteins that crosslink and organize the microtubules into distinct structures upon illumination. We develop basic operations—defined as sets of light patterns—to create, move and merge the microtubule structures. By combining these operations, we create microtubule networks that span several hundred micrometres in length and contract at speeds up to an order of magnitude higher than the speed of an individual motor protein. We manipulate these contractile networks to generate and sculpt persistent fluid flows. The principles of boundary-mediated control that we uncover may be used to study emergent cellular structures and forces and to develop programmable active-matter devices.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1447-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:572:y:2019:i:7768:d:10.1038_s41586-019-1447-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1447-1

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().