Activity induced collapse and re-expansion of rigid polymers
  We study the elastic properties of a rigid filament in a bath of self-propelled particles. We find that while fully flexible filaments swell monotonically upon increasing the strength of the propelling force, rigid filaments soften for moderate activities, collapse into metastable hairpins for intermediate strengths, and eventually re-expand when the strength of the activity of the surrounding fluid is large. This collapse and re-expansion of the filament with the bath activity is reminiscent of the behavior observed in polyelectrolytes in the presence of different concentrations of multivalent salt. 
Joseph Harder, Chantal Valeriani, Angelo Cacciuto
cond-mat.soft