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Active matter

Spontaneous flows and self-propelled drops

Nature volume 491, pages 340–341 (2012)Cite this article

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The construction of in vitro assemblies of biological components that exhibit properties of living matter may shed light on the physical aspects of the dynamic reorganization that continuously occurs inside cells. See Letter p.431

Liquids and gels can be made to flow by applying external forces at their boundaries. In this issue, Sanchez et al.1 report the observation of self-sustained flows that occur in the absence of external forces — a hallmark of living systems — in a model gel. When this 'active' gel is confined to the interior of water droplets in a water–oil emulsion, the flows resemble the streaming used by cells to circulate their fluid content. Even more remarkable is the fact that, when one of these gel-filled droplets comes into contact with a hard surface, the self-driven flows of the confined gel drive the droplet along the surfaceFootnote 1.

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Figure 1: Assembly of microtubule bundles.

Notes

  1. *This article and the paper under discussion1 were published online on 7 November 2012.

References

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  1. M. Cristina Marchetti is in the Department of Physics, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York 13244-1200, USA.,

    M. Cristina Marchetti

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  1. M. Cristina Marchetti
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Correspondence to M. Cristina Marchetti.

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Marchetti, M. Spontaneous flows and self-propelled drops. Nature 491, 340–341 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11750

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