Earthworms often form a cluster, from which they can barely free themselves. A similarly active, writhing structure forms when the tentacles of lion's mane jellyfish become entangled. Robotic grippers ...

Pack enough string-like objects together, and they will begin to align with one another. But replace the strings with worms or bacteria living in your gut, and this self-organization becomes much more ...

In a crowded room, we naturally move slower than in an empty space. Surprisingly, worms can show the exact opposite behavior: In an environment with randomly scattered obstacles, they tend to move ...

Cytoskeletal filaments propelled by surface-bound motor proteins can be viewed as active polymers, a class of active matter. When constraints are imposed on their movements, the propelled cytoskeletal ...

The control of micrometre-scale transport and fluid flow is a foundation of modern technology including synthetic chemistry, DNA sequencing and single-cell genomics 1,2. Conventional transport control ...