Related papers: Beating patterns of filaments in viscoelastic flui…
We have used numerical simulations to investigate how the properties of motor proteins control the dynamical behavior of a driven flexible filament. The filament is pinned at one end and positioned on top of a patch of anchored motor…
Kinesin motors can induce a buckling instability in a microtubule with a fixed minus end. Here we show that by modifying the surface with a protein-repellent functionalization and using clusters of kinesin motors, the microtubule can…
Experiments on the acoustic vibrations of elastic nanostructures in fluid media have been used to study the mechanical properties of materials, as well as for mechanical and biological sensing. The medium surrounding the nanostructure is…
The motion of flexible fibers through structured fluidic environments is ubiquitous in nature and industrial applications. Most often, their dynamics results from the complex interplay between internal elastic stresses, contact forces and…
A fluid dynamics video of the break up of a droplet of saliva is shown. First a viscoelastic filament is formed and than the blistering of this filament is shown. Finally, a flow induced phase separation takes place nanometer sized solid…
Stick-slip motion, a common phenomenon observed during crawling of cells, is found to be strongly sensitive to the substrate stiffness. Stick-slip behaviours have previously been investigated typically using purely elastic substrates. For a…
Active flexible filaments form the classical continuum framework for modelling the locomotion of spermatozoa and algae driven by the periodic oscillation of flagella. This framework also applies to the locomotion of various artificial…
Suspensions of motile cells are model systems for understanding the unique mechanical properties of living materials which often consist of ensembles of self-propelled particles. We present here a quantitative comparison of theory against…
We use linear stability analysis and hybrid lattice Boltzmann simulations to study the dynamical behaviour of an active nematic confined in a channel made of viscoelastic material. We find that the quiescent, ordered active nematic is…
Understanding the hydrodynamics of microswimmers in viscoelastic fluids and confined environments is crucial for interpreting their behaviour in natural settings and designing synthetic microswimmers for practical applications like cargo…
Addition of particles to a viscoelastic suspension dramatically alters the properties of the mixture, particularly when it is sheared or otherwise processed. Shear-induced stretching of the polymers results in elastic stress that causes a…
Many species of bacteria swim through viscous environments by rotating multiple helical flagella. The filaments gather behind the cell body and form a close helical bundle, which propels the cell forward during a "run". The filaments inside…
Bacteria exist in a free-swimming state or in a sessile biofilm state. The transition from free-swimming to sessile mode is characterized by changes in gene expression which alter, among others,the mechanics of flagellar motility. In this…
Semi-flexible filaments in living systems are constantly driven by active forces that often organize into mesoscale coherent flows. Although theory and simulations predict rich filament dynamics, experimental studies of passive filaments in…
The acoustofluidic method holds great promise for manipulating microorganisms. When exposed to the steady vortex structures of acoustic streaming flow, these microorganisms exhibit intriguing dynamic behaviors, such as hydrodynamic trapping…
In nature, many unicellular organisms are able to swim with the help of beating filaments, where local energy input leads to cooperative undulatory beating motion. Here, we investigate by employing reinforcement learning how undulatory…
Active semiflexible filaments are crucial in various biophysical processes, yet insights into their single-filament behavior have predominantly relied on theory and simulations, owing to the scarcity of controllable synthetic systems. Here,…
The dynamics of geometrically non-linear flexible filaments play an important role in a host of biological processes, from flagella-driven cell transport to the polymeric structure of complex fluids. Such problems have historically been…
Advancements in understanding the lateral migration of particles have helped in enhanced separation in microfluidic devices. In this work, we investigate the effects of electrokinetics on the particle migration in a viscoelastic flow, where…
Biological microswimmers such as bacteria and sperm cells often encounter complex biological fluid environments. Here we use the well-known squirmer microswimmer model to show the importance of the local fluid microstructure and…