News Physics

Order from disorder

Collective motion emerges spontaneously in wiggling protein strands

By Alexandra Witze

- More than 2 years ago

Birds and bees do it, and now so do tiny protein strands — spontaneously moving together in the striking patterns known as collective motion.

Protein filaments organized themselves into vortices after being injected with a molecule called ATP. The finding suggests that collective motion might naturally emerge in more biological systems than thought.