First ‘programming language’ for active material enables precise control at cellular level

In 2019, Caltech researchers demonstrated a new method to use light to control active matter—a kind of material made up of individual energy-consuming pieces that act as a whole to create mechanical motion. The process works similarly to how many individual birds form a swarm that seems to move as a whole. In the research, the team focused on active matter in the form of millimeter-sized protein filaments that normally make up a cell’s skeleton, or “cytoskeleton.”

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