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Published August 27, 2021 | Supplemental Material + Submitted + Published
Journal Article Open

Persistent fluid flows defined by active matter boundaries

Abstract

Biological systems control ambient fluids through the self-organization of active protein structures, including flagella, cilia, and cytoskeletal networks. Self-organization of protein components enables the control and modulation of fluid flow fields on micron scales, however, the physical principles underlying the organization and control of active-matter-driven fluid flows are poorly understood. Here, we use an optically-controlled active-matter system composed of microtubule filaments and light-switchable kinesin motor proteins to analyze the emergence of persistent flow fields. Using light, we form contractile microtubule networks of varying size and shape, and demonstrate that the geometry of microtubule flux at the corners of contracting microtubule networks predicts the architecture of fluid flow fields across network geometries through a simple point force model. Our work provides a foundation for programming microscopic fluid flows with controllable active matter and could enable the engineering of versatile and dynamic microfluidic devices.

Additional Information

© The Author(s) 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Received 03 April 2021; Accepted 10 August 2021; Published 27 August 2021. We acknowledge funding from the Donna and Benjamin M. Rosen Bioengineering Center, Foundational Questions Institute and Fetzer Franklin Fund (through FQXi 1816), The Moore Foundation, The Packard Foundation, and Heritage Medical Research Institute. We thank Inna-Marie Strazhnik for the preparation of figures and illustrations. We acknowledge Dr. Guy Riddihough for his editorial assistance with the paper. Data availability: The data is openly available at https://doi.org/10.22002/D1.1858. Code availability: The code to reproduce our main findings can be found on the following Github repositories: The FEM code can be found on https://github.com/domischi/StokesFEM and the PIV analysis code is on https://github.com/ShaiShdk/ActiveFlow_PIV. Author Contributions: Z.Q., J.J., H.J.L., R.P., and M.T. conceived the project. Z.Q., H.J.L., D.L., and F.Y. performed the experiments. J.J. performed the initial investigations of the model. D.S. developed the theoretical framework and performed the finite-element simulations. S.S. performed the PIV analysis. E.A. performed the image segmentation analysis. Z.Q., D.S., and M.T. wrote the paper with input from all authors. The authors declare no competing interests. Peer review information: Communications Physics thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Attached Files

Published - s42005-021-00703-3.pdf

Submitted - 2010.08112.pdf

Supplemental Material - 42005_2021_703_MOESM10_ESM.pdf

Supplemental Material - 42005_2021_703_MOESM11_ESM.pdf

Supplemental Material - 42005_2021_703_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Supplemental Material - 42005_2021_703_MOESM2_ESM.mov

Supplemental Material - 42005_2021_703_MOESM3_ESM.mov

Supplemental Material - 42005_2021_703_MOESM4_ESM.mov

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Supplemental Material - 42005_2021_703_MOESM8_ESM.mov

Supplemental Material - 42005_2021_703_MOESM9_ESM.mov

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