Robert Blackwell's paper "Microscopic origins of anisotropic active stress in motor-driven nematic liquid crystals" was published online in Soft Matter.
Non-equilibrium active matter made up of self-driven particles with short-range repulsive interactions exhibits collective motion and nonequilibrium order-disorder transitions.
Microtubules and motor proteins can form new “bioactive” liquid-crystalline fluids that are intrinsically out of equilibrium and which display complex flows and defect dynamics.
Robert Blackwell's paper (with Tony Gao) "Multiscale polar theory of microtubule and motor-protein assemblies" was published in Physical Review Letters .
Many soft-matter and biophysical systems are composed of monomers that reversibly assemble into rod-like aggregates that can then order into liquid-crystal phases.
Proteins from the kinesin-8 family promote microtubule depolymerization, a process thought to be important for the control of microtubule length in living cells.
