5 papers
Active Force Dynamics in Red Blood Cells Under Non-Invasive Optical Tweezers
Arnau Dorn, Clara Luque-Rioja, Macarena Calero +3
Red blood cells (RBCs) sustain mechanical stresses associated with microcirculatory flow through ATP-driven plasma membrane flickering. This is an active phenomenon driven by motor…
Active Extensile Hydrogels Actuated by Living Polymers of the Bacterial Cytokinetic Protein FtsZ
Mikheil Kharbedia, Diego Herráez-Aguilar, Macarena Calero +6
Active materials capable of autonomously modulating their mechanical properties are foundational to the development of next-generation soft technologies. Here, we introduce a novel…
Stochastic motility energetics reveals cooperative bacterial swarming in optical tweezers
Clara Luque-Rioja, Horacio López-Menéndez, Macarena Calero +4
Bacterial flagellar swarming enables dense microbial populations to migrate collectively across surfaces, often resulting in emergent, coordinated behaviors. However, probing the u…
Collective lattice excitations in the dynamic route for melting hydrodynamic 2D-crystals
Mikheil Kharbedia, Niccolò Caselli, Macarena Calero +5
Surface stiffnesses engender steady patterns of Faraday waves (FWs), so called hydrodynamic crystals as correspond to ordered wave lattices made of discrete subharmonics under mono…
Optical control of spatially localized red blood cell activity by holographic tweezing
Niccolò Caselli, Mario García-Verdugo, Macarena Calero +4
Red blood cells possess unique biomechanical ability to squeeze through capillaries smaller than their size to enable gas and ion exchange. A key signature of their active biomecha…