{"doi":"10.1126/science.aaz4547","title":"Topological structure and dynamics of three-dimensional active nematics","abstract":"Topological structures are effective descriptors of the nonequilibrium dynamics of diverse many-body systems. For example, motile, point-like topological defects capture the salient features of two-dimensional active liquid crystals composed of energy-consuming anisotropic units. We dispersed force-generating microtubule bundles in a passive colloidal liquid crystal to form a three-dimensional active nematic. Light-sheet microscopy revealed the temporal evolution of the millimeter-scale structure of these active nematics with single-bundle resolution. The primary topological excitations are extended, charge-neutral disclination loops that undergo complex dynamics and recombination events. Our work suggests a framework for analyzing the nonequilibrium dynamics of bulk anisotropic systems as diverse as driven complex fluids, active metamaterials, biological tissues, and collections of robots or organisms.","journal":"Science","year":2020,"id":50136,"datarank":4.643052121910539,"base_score":5.342334251964811,"endowment":5.342334251964811,"self_citation_contribution":0.8013501377947218,"citation_network_contribution":3.8417019841158173,"self_endowment_contribution":0.8013501377947218,"citer_contribution":3.8417019841158173,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":208,"citer_count":100,"citers_with_citation_signal":100,"citers_with_endowment":100,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9537,"is_data_producer":true,"deposit_databanks":{"Dryad":["10.25349/D9CS31"]},"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":245430,"name":"Raymond Adkins","orcid":"0000-0001-7622-2812","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":248329,"name":"Debarghya Banerjee","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":245431,"name":"Matthew S. E. Peterson","orcid":"0000-0002-5749-7770","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":245432,"name":"Minu Varghese","orcid":"0000-0003-4410-0233","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":245433,"name":"Itamar Kolvin","orcid":"0000-0002-6869-1245","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":248330,"name":"Arvind Baskaran","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":92491,"name":"Robert A. Pelcovits","orcid":"0000-0002-0520-7516","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":245434,"name":"Thomas R. Powers","orcid":"0000-0003-3432-8226","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":248331,"name":"Aparna Baskaran","orcid":null,"position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":245435,"name":"Federico Toschi","orcid":"0000-0001-5935-2332","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":245436,"name":"Michael F. Hagan","orcid":"0000-0002-9211-2434","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":248332,"name":"Sebastian J. Streichan","orcid":null,"position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":248333,"name":"Vincenzo Vitelli","orcid":null,"position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":245437,"name":"Daniel A. Beller","orcid":"0000-0003-1957-164X","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":245438,"name":"Zvonimir Dogic","orcid":"0000-0003-0142-1838","position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":245429,"name":"Guillaume Duclos","orcid":"0000-0001-9010-8952","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":50,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T20:38:25.860949Z","pmid":"32139540","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}