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  • Review Article
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Active matter at the interface between materials science and cell biology

Abstract

The remarkable processes that characterize living organisms, such as motility, self-healing and reproduction, are fuelled by a continuous injection of energy at the microscale. The field of active matter focuses on understanding how the collective behaviours of internally driven components can give rise to these biological phenomena, while also striving to produce synthetic materials composed of active energy-consuming components. The synergistic approach of studying active matter in both living cells and reconstituted systems assembled from biochemical building blocks has the potential to transform our understanding of both cell biology and materials science. This methodology can provide insight into the fundamental principles that govern the dynamical behaviours of self-organizing subcellular structures, and can lead to the design of artificial materials and machines that operate away from equilibrium and can thus attain life-like properties. In this Review, we focus on active materials made of cytoskeletal components, highlighting the role of active stresses and how they drive self-organization of both cellular structures and macroscale materials, which are machines powered by nanomachines.

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Figure 1: Organisms are machines made from machines.
Figure 2: Properties of mitotic spindles.
Figure 3: Symmetries of filament assemblies and topological defects.
Figure 4: Active stresses in active materials.
Figure 5: Synthetic active matter systems assembled from cytoskeletal components.
Figure 6: Machines built from machines: surface-confined active nematics drive cell-like protrusions and deformations.
Figure 7: Theory and experiments on subcellular structures.

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Acknowledgements

Z.D. acknowledges primary support from Department of Energy Office of Basic Energy Science (Grant No. DE-SC0010432TDD) for supporting research on cytoskeletal active matter. Additional support from John F. Templeton Foundation (Grant Nos 57392 and NSF-MRSEC-1420382) is acknowledged. D.N. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation (Grant Nos PHY-0847188, PHY-1305254 and DMR-0820484).

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Needleman, D., Dogic, Z. Active matter at the interface between materials science and cell biology. Nat Rev Mater 2, 17048 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/natrevmats.2017.48

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