Active Self-Organization of a Composite Actin and Microtubule Gliding System.

Active matter is the field that studies non equilibrium system in different scales, from schools of fish to cytoskeleton of living cells. Playing an important role in cell functions, microtubules and actin are two types of filaments in cytoskeleton that interact with their associated motor proteins, myosin and kinesin respectively. Prior work has inspected with phase diagram for active filaments of either type of cytoskeletal filament separately. Here, we study both filaments in a composite active system where both kinesin-1 and myosin are adhered to the cover glass to create gliding filaments. We observe that the isotropic to aligned phase transition is almost coincident for actin and microtubules.