Research Theme
Ordered pattern formation phenomena are called “self-organization,” “self-assembly,” and “dissipative structure formation.” Such elucidating phenomena have been investigated for a long time, and contribute to uncover the fundamental mechanism for one side of life phenomena. Nevertheless, difference between living and non-living systems is still big. We consider that the complexity and hierarchy of the systems is one of the origins of the big difference.
Biological systems succeed to construct their complex structures and nice functionalities by connecting well molecular to macroscopic levels. For example, supramolecular functionalities are realized by self-assembly of monomers, or separating each endoplasmic reticulum using molecular mumbles and demonstrate suitable functions.
We focus such “hierarchy,” and challenge to realize such hierarchic structure without using biological materials. Using such artificial systems, we try to uncover the universal and fundamental mechanisms for realizing living system.
Now on, collective motion of self-propelled objects is one of the top priority subjects in our lab. Usually, environmental condition is constant over time. However, in the hierarchic system, we have to consider the time variations of the environmental conditions affected by the behaviors of self-propelled objects themselves. In other words, self-propelled objects interact each other through change in the environmental conditions. Another example, we introduce nonlinear chemical reaction into self-propelled droplets. The movement behavior of those droplets are controlled by internal chemical condition. Through analyzing such hierarchic collective systems, we challenge to uncover the operating code of active hierarchic systems.