The remarkable processes that characterize living organisms, such as motility, self-healing and reproduction, are fuelled by a continuous injection of energy at the microscale. The field of active matter focuses on understanding how the collective behaviours of internally driven components can give rise to these biological phenomena, while also striving to produce synthetic materials composed of active energy-consuming components. The synergistic approach of studying active matter in both living cells and reconstituted systems assembled from biochemical building blocks has the potential to transform our understanding of both cell biology and materials science. This methodology can provide insight into the fundamental principles that govern the dynamical behaviours of self-organizing subcellular structures, and can lead to the design of artificial materials and machines that operate away from equilibrium and can thus attain life-like properties. In this Review, we focus on active materials made of cytoskeletal components, highlighting the role of active stresses and how they drive self-organization of both cellular structures and macroscale materials, which are machines powered by nanomachines.

不断地在微观尺度上注入能量助长了表征生物体的非凡过程，例如运动性，自我修复和繁殖。活性物质领域的重点是了解内部驱动组件的集体行为如何引起这些生物学现象，同时还努力生产由活性耗能组件组成的合成材料。研究活细胞和由生化构件组装而成的重组系统中活性物质的协同方法，可能会改变我们对细胞生物学和材料科学的理解。这种方法可以深入了解控制自组织亚细胞结构动力学行为的基本原理，并可能导致人造材料和机器的设计工作失衡，从而获得栩栩如生的性能。在本综述中，我们重点介绍由细胞骨架成分制成的活性材料，重点介绍了活性应力的作用以及它们如何驱动细胞结构和宏观材料的自组织，这些材料是由纳米机器提供动力的机器。