BTP - Arkya Chatterjee
Respondent: Arkya Chatterjee
What project were you working on?
Title: Instability in Active Gels.
Description: Liquid crystals, which are ubiquitous today in the form of Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs), have the fascinating property of simultaneously showing fluidity and long-range order. One of the classes of liquid crystals is the class of nematics. The dynamics of nematics can be described by a theory that is due to Pierre-Giles de Gennes (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1991). A nonequilibrium extension to this liquid crystal framework has become quite popular in the biophysics community over the past decade, namely, active gels. In this project, we studied two systems in which instabilities can arise due to the presence of biological energy sources (a.k.a. activity). The first was a model system with an active nematic confined between two large parallel sheets (like an ideal parallel-plate capacitor). The second was a real biological process, namely, cytoskeletal ring closure, a phenomenon that occurs during cytokinesis*. As part of our ongoing work, we are developing a theory that is able to explain the robustness of this phenomenon against external perturbation. An extreme example of this robustness can be seen in Silva et. al.[1], where even after disintegration of part of the ring by a laser beam, it keeps closing as if nothing happened! This is of vital importance because the timely completion of cytokinesis is necessary for the cells, and ultimately the organism, to be healthy.
*cytokinesis - the physical process of cell division, which divides the cytoplasm of a parental cell into two daughter cells
[1] Silva et. al. “Robust gap repair in the contractile ring ensures timely completion of cytokinesis.” J Cell Biol (2016): jcb-201605080.
Name of the Guide
Amitabha Nandi, Anirban Sain
Is the professor still taking students under the same project?
Not sure
Courses that were part of the curriculum/ additional courses that helped you? Any other tools/softwares that helped you during your project?
Courses: Advanced Statistical Mechanics, Continuum Mechanics, Thermodynamics, Statistical Physics, PDEs
Software: Mathematica
Any feedback or further details you'd like to add?
My guides were very involved with the project themselves, which definitely motivated me to keep working. The work I did was completely pen-and-paper theory, but some coding work might be done in future, as follow-up.
Takeaway: The project was a really nice way of getting acquainted with the philosophy of phenomenological modelling. In courses, we usually just do exact calculations whereas, when real experiments come into the picture, intuition about the physics is really important in coming up with a realistic model that describes the essential physics.
What project were you working on?
Title: Instability in Active Gels.
Description: Liquid crystals, which are ubiquitous today in the form of Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs), have the fascinating property of simultaneously showing fluidity and long-range order. One of the classes of liquid crystals is the class of nematics. The dynamics of nematics can be described by a theory that is due to Pierre-Giles de Gennes (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1991). A nonequilibrium extension to this liquid crystal framework has become quite popular in the biophysics community over the past decade, namely, active gels. In this project, we studied two systems in which instabilities can arise due to the presence of biological energy sources (a.k.a. activity). The first was a model system with an active nematic confined between two large parallel sheets (like an ideal parallel-plate capacitor). The second was a real biological process, namely, cytoskeletal ring closure, a phenomenon that occurs during cytokinesis*. As part of our ongoing work, we are developing a theory that is able to explain the robustness of this phenomenon against external perturbation. An extreme example of this robustness can be seen in Silva et. al.[1], where even after disintegration of part of the ring by a laser beam, it keeps closing as if nothing happened! This is of vital importance because the timely completion of cytokinesis is necessary for the cells, and ultimately the organism, to be healthy.
*cytokinesis - the physical process of cell division, which divides the cytoplasm of a parental cell into two daughter cells
[1] Silva et. al. “Robust gap repair in the contractile ring ensures timely completion of cytokinesis.” J Cell Biol (2016): jcb-201605080.
Name of the Guide
Amitabha Nandi, Anirban Sain
Is the professor still taking students under the same project?
Not sure
Courses that were part of the curriculum/ additional courses that helped you? Any other tools/softwares that helped you during your project?
Courses: Advanced Statistical Mechanics, Continuum Mechanics, Thermodynamics, Statistical Physics, PDEs
Software: Mathematica
Any feedback or further details you'd like to add?
My guides were very involved with the project themselves, which definitely motivated me to keep working. The work I did was completely pen-and-paper theory, but some coding work might be done in future, as follow-up.
Takeaway: The project was a really nice way of getting acquainted with the philosophy of phenomenological modelling. In courses, we usually just do exact calculations whereas, when real experiments come into the picture, intuition about the physics is really important in coming up with a realistic model that describes the essential physics.
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