Study of Bend Instability & Efficiency in Microtubule and Motor Protein based Active Gels

In the last few years, the use of cytoskeletal filaments and motor proteins to create active systems has emerged as a promising method for exploring the field of active matter. We study an active system which consists of microtubules and kinesin motors and explore the hydrodynamic instability which is inherent in many active materials with orientational order. This instability depends on the microscopic parameters of our system such as motor concentration and channel dimension. In addition to exploring these parameters we compare the activity of microtubule bound SNAP-tagged kinesin to the activity of kinesin clusters formed by biotin-streptavidin bonds. An active gel with SNAP-kinesin uses the fuel more efficiently compared to kinesin clusters and lasts for more than hundred hours.