Data underlying the manuscript: Self-mixing in microtubule-kinesin active fluid from nonuniform to uniform distribution of activity

This database presents the data used in the manuscript: Self-mixing in microtubule-kinesin active fluid from nonuniform to uniform distribution of activity (Bate et al. Nat Commun 13, 6573 [2022]). This database contains two sets of data: (1) images of tracer particles suspended in active-inactive fluid systems and (2) images of fluorescein suspended in active-inactive fluid systems. Each data set is provided with associated analysis script for demonstrating the process of extracting mixing-related parameters from the data, such as interface progression exponents, interface progression coefficients and mixing times. The first data set contains 4 files: Data1.zip, analysis1.m, Mask.tif, and Tracking.mat. Data1.zip contains 1 hour of frame-by-frame tracer data from an individual experiment in the [cATP] sweep in Fig. 2c of the manuscript, for the sample with 5 mM caged ATP. The tracers are tracked using the tracking software developed by Ouellette et al. (Experiments in Fluids 40, 301-313 [2005]) and the tracking results are output in Tracking.mat, which can be subsequently imported to MATLAB by running analysis1.m (requiring MATLAB Curve Fitting Toolbox, Image Processing Toolbox and Parallel Computing Toolbox). The script outputs the interface progression exponents and interface progression coefficient of this data set. The script also allows for analyzing a specific region of interest defined as the black pixels in Mask.tif. In this analysis, the region of interest is set to be the entire image. The second data set contains 2 files: Data2.zip and analysis2.m. Data2.zip contains 1 hour of frame-by-frame fluorescein data from an individual experiment in the fluorescein sweep in Fig. 5 of the manuscript. The sample contains 3.2 mM caged ATP, 3 µM caged fluorescein, 80 nM K365 dimers and the sample height is 100 µm. This experiment is designed to probe the mixing time of suspended fluorescein in the active fluid system. To extract the mixing time, Data2.zip needs to be unzipped and analysis2.m needs to be run in MATLAB (requiring MATLAB Curve Fitting Toolbox and Image Processing Toolbox), which will read the fluorescein images to analyze the multiscale norm and output the mixing time.