Worms 🪱 bring order to their environment!

Upsurge of Spontaneous Knotting in Polar Diblock Active Polymers Simulations show that polymers that include inert and self-propelled components are more likely to form and retain knots, with possible applications in materials engineering.

Very happy to see this work out! We propose a way to realize simple knots at the nano- and micro-scales using tangential activity with a diblock copolymer architecture. Work done @unipd.bsky.social

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Locomotion of Active Polymerlike Worms in Porous Media We investigate the locomotion of thin, living \textit{T.~Tubifex} worms, which display active polymerlike behavior, within quasi-2D arrays of pillars with different spatial arrangements and densities....

Why? Check our preprint:
arxiv.org/abs/2407.18805

(ii) Lowering the worms' activity—whether by getting them drunk 🍺 or chilling them down 🥶—unexpectedly leads to higher diffusion! 🤯
We also compared our experimental findings with the tangentially driven polymer model.

(i) Unlike their passive counterparts, living polymers spread faster in disordered media than in ordered media. Even more intriguingly, in disordered media, they move faster as the medium becomes denser, defying the common intuition that "the more crowded it is, the slower you go".

The 🪱 mania continues!
In our latest study, led by Rosa, we explored the locomotion and dynamics of living worms—acting as active polymers—navigating a porous environment made of 3D-printed pillar arrays. And we found something surprising...

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May I join? 🙏