Related papers: Discrete elastic model for stretching-induced flag…
We explore the locomotion of soft robots in granular medium (GM) resulting from the elastic deformation of slender rods. A low-cost, rapidly fabricable robot inspired by the physiological structure of bacteria is presented. It consists of a…
We introduce a three-dimensional model for polyelectrolyte hydrogel filaments operating in a fluid environment under an electric field. The formulation builds on a morphoelastic framework for inextensible and unshearable rods, such that the…
We study how the three-dimensional shape of rigid filaments determines the microscopic dynamics and macroscopic rheology of entangled semi-dilute Brownian suspensions. To control the filament shape we use bacterial flagella, which are…
Trajectories and conformations of uni- and multiflagellar bacteria are studied with a coarse-grained model of a cell comprised of elastic flagella connected to a cell body. The elasticities of both the hook protein (connecting cell body and…
Bacterial mobility is powered by rotation of helical flagellar filaments driven by rotary motors. Flagellin isolated from {\it Salmonella Typhimurium} SJW1660 strain, which differs by a point mutation from the wild-type strain, assembles…
We demonstrate that internal pivot-like defects, arising from rigor mutant motor proteins that bind without stepping, fundamentally reshape the dynamics of semiflexible filaments in two-dimensional motility assays. Using large-scale…
The bundling of flagella is known to create a "run" phase, where the bacteria moves in a nearly straight line rather than making changes in direction. Historically, mechanical explanations for the bundling phenomenon intrigued many…
Many bacterial species are helical in form, including the widespread pathogen H. pylori. Motivated by recent experiments on H. pylori showing that cell wall synthesis is not uniform, we investigate the possible formation of helical cell…
It is known from the wave-like motion of microtubules in motility assays that the piconewton forces that motors produce can be sufficient to bend the filaments. In cellular phenomena such as cytosplasmic streaming, molecular motors…
Flagellated microorganisms overcome the low-Reynolds-number time reversibility by rotating helical flagella. For peritrichous bacteria, such as Escherichia coli, the randomly distributed flagellar filaments align along the same direction to…
The shapes of epithelial tissues result from a complex interplay of contractile forces in the cytoskeleta of the cells in the tissue, and adhesion forces between them. A host of discrete, cell-based models describe these forces by assigning…
Microbial flagellates typically inhabit complex suspensions of polymeric material which can impact the swimming speed of motile microbes, filter-feeding of sessile cells, and the generation of biofilms. There is currently a need to better…
We present a model for the dynamics of elastic or poroelastic bodies with monopolar repulsive long-range (electrostatic) interactions at large strains. Our model respects (only) locally the non-self-interpenetration condition but can cope…
Cilia and flagella are highly conserved slender organelles that exhibit a variety of rhythmic beating patterns from non-planar cone-like motions to planar wave-like deformations. Although their internal structure, composed of a…
A homogeneous elastic solid, bounded by a flat surface in its unstressed configuration, undergoes a finite strain when in frictionless contact against a rigid and rectilinear constraint, ending with a rounded or sharp corner, in a…
The hydrodynamic interactions among bacterial cell bodies, flagella, and surrounding boundaries are essential for understanding bacterial motility in complex environments. In this study, we demonstrate that each slender flagellum can be…
A growing body of work aims at designing and testing micron-scale synthetic swimmers. One method, inspired by the locomotion of flagellated bacteria, consists of applying a rotating magnetic field to a rigid, helically-shaped, propeller…
Many organisms have an elastic skeleton that consists of a closed shell of epithelial cells that is filled with fluid, and can actively regulate both elastic forces in the shell and hydrostatic pressure inside it. In this work we introduce…
We study the emergence of helical structures subjected to a stretching force, demonstrating that the force transforms disk-shaped colloidal membranes into twisted chiral ribbons of predetermined handedness. Using an experimental technique…
We investigate the motion of a flexible Stokesean flagellar swimmer realised as a yarn made of two intertwined elastomer fibres, one active, that can reversibly change its length in response to a local excitation causing transition to the…