Débora Princepe, Marcus AM de Aguiar, Joshua B Plotkin Nat Ecol Evol 6, 1992–2002 (2022). doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01901-0 Mitochondrial and nuclear genomes must be co-adapted to ensure proper cellular respiration and energy production. Mito-nuclear incompatibility reduces individual fitness and induces hybrid infertility, which can drive reproductive barriers and speciation. Here, we develop a birth–death model for evolution…

Hongri Gu, Emre Hanedan, Quentin Boehler, Tian-Yun Huang, Arnold JTM Mathijssen, Bradley J Nelson   Nature Machine Intelligence: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-022-00510-7 Directed transport of microcargoes is essential for living organisms as well as for applications in microrobotics, nanotechnology and biomedicine. Existing delivery technologies often suffer from low speeds, limited navigation control and dispersal by cardiovascular flows. In…

Jakub Jadwiszczak, Jeffrey Sherman, David Lynall, Yang Liu, Boyan Penkov, Erik Young, Rachael Keneipp, Marija Drndić, James C Hone, Kenneth L Shepard   ACS Nano 2022, 16, 1, 1639–1648 : https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.1c10524 Inverting a semiconducting channel is the basis of all field-effect transistors. In silicon-based metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs), a gate dielectric mediates this inversion. Access to…

Alex McAvoy, Yoichiro Mori & Joshua B. Plotkin   A selfish learner seeks to maximize their own success, disregarding others. When success is measured as payoff in a game played against another learner, mutual selfishness typically fails to produce the optimal outcome for a pair of individuals. However, learners often operate in populations, and each…

Alexander Gareth P, Kamien Randall D.   We review the interpretation of Whitehead products in homotopy theory as an entanglement of topological defects in ordered media.   Liquid Crystals Reviews: 10.1080/21680396.2022.2067257    

Sam Dillavou, Menachem Stern, Andrea J. Liu, and Douglas J. Durian Phys. Rev. Applied 18, 014040 : https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.18.014040 In typical artificial neural networks, neurons adjust according to global calculations of a central processor, but in the brain, neurons and synapses self-adjust based on local information. Contrastive learning algorithms have recently been proposed to train physical systems,…

Qi Su, Alex McAvoy , Yoichiro Mori, Joshua B. Plotkin Nature Human Behaviour: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01241-2 Human societies include diverse social relationships. Friends, family, business colleagues and online contacts can all contribute to one’s social life. Individuals may behave differently in different domains, but success in one domain may engender success in another. Here, we study this…

Sean Fancher and Eleni Katifori Phys. Rev. Fluids DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.7.013101 The dynamics of flow within a material transport network is dependent upon the dynamics of its power source. Responding to a change of these dynamics is critical for the fitness of living flow networks, e.g., the animal vasculature, which are subject to frequent and sudden shifts…

Zehui Xia, Chih-Yuan Lin, Marija Drndić Proteomics: https://doi.org/10.1002/pmic.202100071   Enabled by proteins, we present an all-electrical method for rapid detection of small pharmaceuticals (ibuprofen and sulfamethoxazole, SMZ) in aqueous media using silicon nitride pores. Specifically, we use carrier proteins, bovine serum albumin (BSA) and take advantage of their interactions with two small drug molecules to…

Lindsay M Smith, Jason Z Kim, Zhixin Lu, Dani S Bassett Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science DOI: https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0075572   Neural systems are well known for their ability to learn and store information as memories. Even more impressive is their ability to abstract these memories to create complex internal representations, enabling advanced functions such…

Colin R Twomey, Gareth Roberts, David H Brainard, Joshua B Plotkin   PNAS: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2109237118 Names for colors vary widely across languages, but color categories are remarkably consistent. Shared mechanisms of color perception help explain consistent partitions of visible light into discrete color vocabularies. But the mappings from colors to words are not identical across languages,…

Manasvita Vashisth, Sangkyun Cho, Jerome Irianto, Yuntao Xia, Mai Wang, Brandon Hayes, Daniel Wieland, Rebecca Wells, Farshid Jafarpour, Andrea Liu, Dennis E Discher   PNAS: 2021 118 (48) e2112940118; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2112940118   Nonlinear scaling analyses pervade polymer physics and chemistry, yielding characteristic exponents that conceivably apply to expressed genes and their assemblies. Stoichiometric scaling and fractal…

  Sophie Ettinger, Clarissa F Dietrich, Chandan K Mishra, Cornelia Miksch, Daniel A Beller, Peter J Collings, AG Yodh   Soft Matter: https://doi.org/10.1039/D1SM01209F   In lyotropic chromonic liquid crystals (LCLCs), twist distortion of the nematic director costs much less energy than splay or bend distortion. This feature leads to novel mirror-symmetry breaking director configurations when…

Ahmet F Demirörs, Sümeyye Aykut, Sophia Ganzeboom, Yuki A Meier, Robert Hardeman, Joost de Graaf, Arnold JTM Mathijssen, Erik Poloni, Julia A Carpenter, Caner Ünlü, Daniel Zenhäusern Adv. Sci. 2021, https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202102510   One of the major challenges in modern robotics is controlling micromanipulation by active and adaptive materials. In the respiratory system, such actuation enables…

Eugenio Piasini, Liviu Soltuzu, Paolo Muratore, Riccardo Caramellino, Kasper Vinken, Hans Op de Beeck, Vijay Balasubramanian & Davide Zoccolan  Nature Communications volume 12, Article number: 4448 (2021) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24456-3 Cortical representations of brief, static stimuli become more invariant to identity-preserving transformations along the ventral stream. Likewise, increased invariance along the visual hierarchy should imply greater temporal persistence of…

Tomer Markovich and Tom C. Lubensky DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.048001   In common fluids, viscosity is associated with dissipation. However, when time-reversal symmetry is broken a new type of nondissipative “viscosity” emerges. Recent theories and experiments on classical 2D systems with active spinning particles have heightened interest in “odd viscosity,” but a microscopic theory for it in…

Yi Jin, Aixi Zhang, Sarah E Wolf, Shivajee Govind, Alex R Moore, Mikhail Zhernenkov, Guillaume Freychet, Ahmad Arabi Shamsabadi, Zahra Fakhraai   PNAS August 3, 2021 118 (31) e2100738118; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2100738118 Enhanced surface mobility enables rapid equilibration of vapor-deposited glasses toward the supercooled liquid (SCL). We demonstrate that thin films of N,N′-bis(3-methylphenyl)-N,N′-diphenylbenzidine molecular glass, when vapor…

Thomas E Mallouk,   National Science Review, nwab119, https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwab119 Molecular and colloidal ‘motors’ have attracted much attention over the past two decades as synthetic analogues of mo- tor proteins and microorganisms such as bacteria. While schemes have been developed for powering these objects with light, ultrasound, electric and magnetic fields, and thermal gradients, chemically propelled…

Helen S. Ansell  and  Randall D. Kamien. Soft Matter , DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/D1SM00772F We develop an energetic model that captures the twisting behavior of spindle-shaped polymer microparticles with nematic ordering, which display remarkably different twisting behavior to ordinary nematics confined to spindles. We have previously developed a geometric model of the twisting, based on experimental observations, in which…

Daeyeon Lee       Jingyu Wu, Sagar Yadavali, Daeyeon Lee, David A Issadore Applied Physics Reviews https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0049897       The last two decades have witnessed tremendous progress in the development of microfluidic chips that generate micrometer- and nanometer-scale materials. These chips allow precise control over composition, structure, and particle uniformity not achievable using…

Paris Perdikaris   Sifan Wang, Hanwen Wang, Paris Perdikaris   Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cma.2021.113938   Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) are demonstrating remarkable promise in integrating physical models with gappy and noisy observational data, but they still struggle in cases where the target functions to be approximated exhibit high-frequency or multi-scale features. In this work…

Chenyu Jin, Yibo Chen, Corinna C. Maass, and Arnold J. T. M. Mathijssen Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 088006 : https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.088006 Microswimmers can serve as cargo carriers that move deep inside complex flow networks. When a school collectively entrains the surrounding fluid, their transport capacity can be enhanced. This effect is quantified with good agreement between experiments with…

Andrea J. Liu Menachem Stern, Daniel Hexner, Jason W. Rocks, and Andrea J. Liu Phys. Rev. X 11, 021045 – Published 28 May 2021 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.11.021045 Materials and machines are often designed with particular goals in mind, so that they exhibit desired responses to given forces or constraints. Here we explore an alternative approach, namely physical…

Arjun G. Yodh Clara Gregori-Pla, Rickson C. Mesquita, Christopher G. Favilla, David R. Busch, Igor Blanco, Peyman Zirak, Lisa Kobayashi Frisk, Stella Avtzi, Federica Maruccia, Giacomo Giacalone, Gianluca Cotta, Pol Camps-Renom, Michael T. Mullen, Joan Martí-Fàbregas, Luís Prats-Sánchez, Alejandro Martínez-Domeño, Scott E. Kasner, Joel H. Greenberg, Chao Zhou, Brian L. Edlow, Mary E. Putt, John…

Arjun G. Yodh Clara Gregori-Pla, Rickson C. Mesquita, Christopher G. Favilla, David R. Busch, Igor Blanco, Peyman Zirak, Lisa Kobayashi Frisk, Stella Avtzi, Federica Maruccia, Giacomo Giacalone, Gianluca Cotta, Pol Camps-Renom, Michael T. Mullen, Joan Martí-Fàbregas, Luís Prats-Sánchez, Alejandro Martínez-Domeño, Scott E. Kasner, Joel H. Greenberg, Chao Zhou, Brian L. Edlow, Mary E. Putt, John…

Mark Goulian Schulte, J.E. Roggiani, M. , Shi, H, Zhu, J. Goulian, M. Journal of Biological Chemistry, Volume 296, 1 January 2021, Article number 100090 DOI: 10.1074/jbc.RA120.015121 Histidine phosphorylation is a posttranslational modification that alters protein function and also serves as an intermediate of phosphoryl transfer. Although phosphohistidine is relatively unstable, enzymatic dephosphorylation of this residue…

Daeyeon Lee, Russell J. Composto   Katie A. Rose , Daeyeon Lee  and Russell J. Composto    Soft Matter: 10.1039/D0SM02213F The effect of static silica particles on the dynamics of quantum dot (QD) nanoparticles grafted with a poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) brush in hydrogel nanocomposites is investigated using single particle tracking (SPT). At a low volume…

Virgil Percec Ning Huang, Qi Xiao , Mihai Peterca, Xiangbing Zeng & Virgil Percec Molecular Physics: https://doi.org/10.1080/00268976.2021.1902586 Frank-Kasper phases are available in both hard and soft complex matter. They have been discovered in metal alloys and subsequently in self-organisations of supramolecular spheres from self-assembling dendrons, dendrimers and dendronized polymers. Recently, they were found in block…

Arnold Mathijssen   Francisca Guzmán-Lastra, Hartmut Löwen & Arnold J. T. M. Mathijssen Nature Communications volume 12, Article number: 1906 (2021) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22029-y   Biological activity is often highly concentrated on surfaces, across the scales from molecular motors and ciliary arrays to sessile and motile organisms. These ‘active carpets’ locally inject energy into their surrounding fluid. Whereas Fick’s laws of diffusion are established…

Marija Drndić Yung-Chien Chou, Joshua Chen, Chih-Yuan Lin, Marija Drndić   J. Chem. Phys. 154, 105102 (2021); https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0044227   We report ionic current and double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) translocation measurements through solid-state membranes with two TEM-drilled ∼3-nm diameter silicon nitride nanopores in parallel. Nanopores are fabricated with similar diameters but varying in effective thicknesses (from 2.6 to 10…

Vijay Balasubramanian Keinath, Alexandra T; Rechnitz, Ohad; Balasubramanian, Vijay; Epstein, Russell A   Hippocampus. , 2021, Vol.31(1), p.89-101 https://doi.org/10.1002/hipo.23265   Place and grid cells in the hippocampal formation are commonly thought to support a unified and coherent cognitive map of space. This mapping mechanism faces a challenge when a navigator is placed in a familiar…

Mark Goulian Chen, A.I, Albicoro, F.J, Zhu, J, Goulian, M   Antimicrobial Agents and ChemotherapyVolume 65, Issue 3, March 2021, Article number e00889-20   Polymyxins are a class of cyclic peptides with antimicrobial activity against Gram-negative bacteria. In Enterobacteriaceae, the PhoQ/PhoP and PmrB/PmrA two-component systems regulate many genes that confer resistance to both polymyxins and host antimicrobial peptides.…

Danielle S. Bassett Erica B. Baller, Antonia N. Kaczkurkin, Azeez Adebimpe, Danielle S. Bassett, Monica E. Calkins, Zaixu Cui, Raquel E. Gur, Ruben C. Gur, Tyler M. Moore, David R. Roalf, Daniel H. Wolf, Cedric H. Xia & Theodore D. Satterthwaite   Neuropsychopharmacology volume 46, pages783–790(2021) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-020-00871-w Depression is a common psychiatric illness that often begins in youth, and is sometimes associated with cognitive deficits. However, there is significant variability in…

Danielle S. Bassett Giacomo Baggio, Danielle S. Bassett & Fabio Pasqualetti Nature Communications volume 12, Article number: 1429 (2021) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21554-0   Our ability to manipulate the behavior of complex networks depends on the design of efficient control algorithms and, critically, on the availability of an accurate and tractable model of the network dynamics. While the design of control algorithms for…

This is a unique publication by the center's Virgil Percec, dedicated to celebrating the life and accomplishments of Rosalind Franklin, and is well worth the read. Virgil Percec and Qi Xiao Chem 7, 529–536,: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chempr.2021.02.020 Published March 11th, 2021 Summary: Rosalind Franklin’s short scientific carrier produced brilliant contributions to the structure of carbon, DNA, and…

Alex J.Hughes   Andrew C.Daly, Margaret E.Prendergast, Alex J.Hughes, Jason A.Burdick   Cell : https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2020.12.002   Summary Building tissues from scratch to explore entirely new cell configurations could revolutionize fundamental understanding in biology. Bioprinting is an emerging technology to do this. Although typically applied to engineer tissues for therapeutic tissue repair or drug screening, there…

Paul A. Janmey Johanna Claus, Ann Jastram, Ewelina Piktel, Robert Bucki, Paul A. Janmey, Udo Kragl Journal of Applied Polymer Science : https://doi.org/10.1039/D0SM01442G Cells can respond to signals generated by other cells that are remarkably far away. Studies from at least the 1920's showed that cells move toward each other when the distance between them…

Douglas J.Durian A. T. Chieco and D. J. Durian Phys. Rev. E 103, 012610 : https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.103.012610 – Published 20 January 2021 We present high-precision data for the time evolution of bubble area A(t) and circularity shape parameter C(t) for several bubbles in a quasi-two-dimensional foams consisting of bubbles squashed between parallel plates. In order to fully…

Eleni Katifori Irina Kneuper, William Teale, Jonathan Edward Dawson, Ryuji Tsugeki, Eleni Katifori, Klaus Palme, Franck Anicet Ditengou Journal of Experimental Botany, Volume 72, Issue 4, 24 February 2021, Pages 1151–1165, https://doi.org/10.1093/jxb/eraa501 Our current understanding of vein development in leaves is based on canalization of the plant hormone auxin into self-reinforcing streams which determine the…

Paul A. Janmey Farid Alisafaei, Xingyu Chen,  Thomas Leahy,  Paul A. Janmey  and  Vivek B. Shenoy Soft Matter : https://doi.org/10.1039/D0SM01442G Cells can respond to signals generated by other cells that are remarkably far away. Studies from at least the 1920's showed that cells move toward each other when the distance between them is on the…

Prashant K Purohit Sunder Neelakantan, Prashant K Purohit, Saba Pasha   Journal of Biomechanical Engineering:  https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4048400 The mechanism of the scoliotic curve development in healthy adolescents remains unknown in the field of orthopedic surgery. Variations in the sagittal curvature of the spine are believed to be a leading cause of scoliosis in this patient population.…

Prashant K.Purohit Bolei Deng, Jian Li, Vincent Tournat, Prashant K Purohit, Katia Bertoldi Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmps.2020.104233 Flexible mechanical metamaterials have been recently shown to support a rich nonlinear dynamic response. In particular, it has been demonstrated that the behavior of rotating-square architected systems in the continuum limit can be…

ParisPerdikaris   SifanWang, ParisPerdikaris   Journal of Computational Physics: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcp.2020.109914 Free boundary problems appear naturally in numerous areas of mathematics, science and engineering. These problems present a great computational challenge because they necessitate numerical methods that can yield an accurate approximation of free boundaries and complex dynamic interfaces. In this work, we propose a multi-network…

Celia Reina Shenglin Huang, Chuanpeng Sun, Prashant K.Purohit, Celia Reina   Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmps.2021.104323   The Jarzynski relation, as an equality form of the second law of thermodynamics, represents an exact thermodynamic statement that is valid arbitrarily far away from equilibrium. This remarkable relation directly links the equilibrium free…

Louis J. Soslowsky Joseph B. Newton, George W. Fryhofer, Ashley B. Rodriguez, Andrew F. Kuntz, Louis J. Soslowsky Journal of Biomechanics, Volume 117, 2021, 110249, ISSN 0021-9290, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbiomech.2021.110249 Rotator cuff tendon tears and tendinopathies are common injuries affecting a large portion of the population and can result in pain and joint dysfunction. Incidence of rotator…

Andrea J Liu Jason W. Rocks,  Sean A. Ridout and  Andrea J. Liu APL Materials 9, 021107 (2021); https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0035395   The plasticity of amorphous solids undergoing shear is characterized by quasi-localized rearrangements of particles. While many models of plasticity exist, the precise relationship between the plastic dynamics and the structure of a particle’s local environment…

Arjun G. Yodh Jonah A. Padawer-Curry, Jharna Jahnavi, Jake S. Breimann, Daniel J. Licht, Arjun G. Yodh, Akiva S. Cohen, and Brian R. White Journal of the Optical Society of America A: https://doi.org/10.1364/JOSAA.410447   To compare neuroimaging data between subjects, images from individual sessions need to be aligned to a common reference or “atlas.” Atlas…

Yi-Wei Chang     Eleonora Aquilini, Marta Mendonça Cova, Shrawan Kumar Mageswaran, Nicolas Dos Santos Pacheco, Daniela Sparvoli, Diana Marcela Penarete-Vargas, Rania Najm, Arnault Graindorge, Catherine Suarez, Marjorie Maynadier, Laurence Berry-Sterkers, Serge Urbach, Pilar Ruga Fahy, Amandine N Guérin, Boris Striepen, Jean-François Dubremetz, Yi-Wei Chang, Aaron P Turkewitz, Maryse Lebrun   Nat Microbiol (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-020-00854-z  …

Kevin T. Turner Ryan Coulson, Christopher J. Stabile, Kevin T. Turner and Carmel Majidi   22 Jan 2021:  https://doi.org/10.1089/soro.2020.0088     Within the field of robotics, stiffness tuning technologies have potential for a variety of applications—perhaps most notably for robotic grasping. Many stiffness tuning grippers have been developed that can grasp fragile or irregularly shaped objects…

Prashant Kishore Purohit Xinyu Liao, Prashant Kishore Purohit Soft Matter: https://doi.org/10.1039/D0SM01752C   Self-assembly of proteins on lipid membranes underlies many important processes in cell biology, such as, exo- and endo-cytosis, assembly of viruses, etc. An attractive force that can cause self-assembly is mediated by membrane thickness interactions between proteins. The free energy profile associated with…

Andrea J Liu Horst-Holger Boltz, Jorge Kurchan, and Andrea J. Liu Physical Review Research: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.3.013061   We discuss the properties of the distributions of energies of minima obtained by gradient descent in complex energy landscapes. We find strikingly similar phenomenology across several prototypical models. We particularly focus on the distribution of energies of minima in…

Andrea J Liu, Eleni Katifori Jason W Rocks, Andrea J Liu, Eleni Katifori Physical Review Letters : https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.028102 The ability to reroute and control flow is vital to the function of venation networks across a wide range of organisms. By modifying individual edges in these networks, either by adjusting edge conductances or creating and destroying…

James Shorter   Bede Portz, Bo Lim Lee, James Shorter   Trends in Biochemical Sciences: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tibs.2020.12.005   Phase separation by proteins containing intrinsically-disordered regions (IDRs) underpins the biogenesis of functional membraneless organelles, as well as the formation of aggregated structures linked to neurodegenerative disease. One class of IDR, termed a prion-like domain (PrLD), is frequently…

Andrea J Liu Indrajit Tah, Tristan A Sharp, Andrea J Liu, Daniel M Sussman Soft Matter: https://doi.org/10.1039/D0SM01575J Machine learning techniques have been used to quantify the relationship between local structural features and variations in local dynamical activity in disordered glass-forming materials. To date these methods have been applied to an array of standard (Arrhenius and…

Karen I Winey Tamar Zelovich, Karen I Winey, Mark E Tuckerman Journal of Materials Chemistry A: https://doi.org/10.1039/D0TA10565A   Fuel-cell deployable proton exchange membranes (PEMs) are considered to be a promising technology for clean and efficient power generation. However, a fundamental atomistic understanding of the hydronium diffusion process in the PEM environment is an ongoing challenge.…

Significance It is well appreciated that many disordered materials deform their shape irreversibly (plastically) under an external load (e.g., memory foam). Here, we show that this plasticity can be exploited to train materials to develop novel elastic responses by straining them periodically. By applying different periodic strains to a common viscoelastic material, we are able…

The ability to reroute and control flow is vital to the function of venation networks across a wide range of organisms. By modifying individual edges in these networks, either by adjusting edge conductances or creating and destroying edges, organisms robustly control the propagation of inputs to perform specific tasks.