Speaker
Description
Collective motion is widely observed in nature, from schools of fish to bird flocks and insect colonies, where groups can accomplish tasks beyond the capability of individuals. Such phenomena suggest the possibility of scalable force generation, in which macroscopic output increases with the number of active agents; however, this principle remains poorly quantified in active matter systems. We experimentally quantified the collective force generated by kinesin-driven microtubule (MT) swarms using a custom-built electromagnetic tweezer setup. By varying the swarm size, we found that the collective force exhibits a linear dependence on the number of kinesin motors [1]. Our measurements provide the first quantitative estimate of forces generated by thousands of molecular motors acting collectively. Interestingly, the measured force is smaller than that expected from a purely additive contribution of individual motors. In this presentation, we introduce the experimental system and results, and discuss the physical mechanisms underlying collective force generation.
[1] M. R. Rashid, M. Akter, A. M. R. Kabir, K. Sada, T. Hiraiwa, A. Kuzuya, I. Kawamata, M. Tani, and A. Kakugo, ACS Nano, in press