Big picture: active materials do not have a single monotonic “efficiency” curve. Their mechanical organization can reshape how energy is dissipated beyond linear response.
Crosslinker mechanics tune this transition. Fascin and alpha-actinin shift the dissipation peak in different directions, showing how bonding architecture controls energy flow far from equilibrium.
From @yale.edu to @istaresearch.bsky.social
New preprint from my Ph.D.:
'Mechanical organization yields degenerate dissipation beyond linear response'
We asked how energy dissipation changes as an active actomyosin material is driven farther from equilibrium.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Happy to announce that I’m among the 55 awardees for the HFSP postdoc fellowship. Truly honored by HFSP committee’s recognition on the potential of the proposed science 😁. Science continues.
The usual intuition is simple: more driving means more dissipation.
Using sensitive calorimetry and entropy production metrics, we found something more interesting: dissipation rises at low driving, then falls at high driving.
Zachary Gao Sun
Mechanistically, high myosin-generated stress can suppress motor ATPase activity. So extra driving does not just amplify dissipation; it reorganizes where stress lives in the material.
University leaders are facing calls to apologize for their alleged treatment of a tenured neuroscientist who died by suicide after being investigated as part of Donald Trump’s China Initiative
go.nature.com/4cKzNQr
Zachary Gao Sun
"If you wanted to cripple science research and were disappointed that Congress continued to fund it, this is the sort of document you would produce.
It pulls US scientists out of the international community, leaves them unable to communicate their findings ..."
arstechnica.com/science/2026...
A new paper by the @heisenbergcplab.bsky.social, @ehannezo.bsky.social, and colleagues from @sorbonne-universite.fr, and
@unileiden.bsky.social, just published in @natcomms.nature.com, reveals how crucial this protein is for life itself. Link to paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
