Physics of Active Matter and Living Systems

Biological systems exhibit a remarkable ability to self-organise complex patterns and structures, which are established through flows and rearrangements of biological matter. At the scale of an organ containing many cells, we expect emergent features to appear that are independent of many details of the cellular organisation. As biological systems operate out of thermodynamic equilibrium, there are an example of active matter, a form of matter locally driven out of equilibrium by chemical reactions. By making a connection between the physics of active matter and biology, can we identify general principles by which biological tissues organize on large-scale, independent of many of the molecular details of how single cells operate? For instance, what is the relationship between force and deformation inside biological tissues? Can tissues be considered as active liquid crystals? These questions relate to how the principle of « more is different » is realised in biology going from a single cell to an entire tissue.