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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 May 15.
Published in final edited form as: Nature. 2012 Nov 7;491(7424):431–434. doi: 10.1038/nature11591

Fig. 4. Motile water-in-oil emulsion droplets.

Fig. 4

(a) Droplets containing extensile MT bundles exhibit spontaneous autonomous motility, when partially compressed between chamber surfaces. A droplet trajectory taken over a time interval of 33 minutes is overlaid onto a brightfield droplet image. (b) In the absence of ATP, passive droplets exert no internal forces, and the only contribution to their movement is minor drift. 80 μm bar. (c) Fluorescence image of active MT bundles which spontaneously adsorb onto the oil-water interface. The resulting active liquid crystalline phase exhibits streaming flows, indicated with blue arrows. Red arrow indicates instantaneous droplet velocity. The image is focused on the droplet surface that is in contact with the coverslip. 100 μm bar. (d) Image of the droplet taken at a midplane indicates that the droplet interior is largely devoid of MT bundles. 100 μm bar.