Related papers: Dynamics of the bacterial flagellar motor with mul…
Bacterial motility, and in particular repulsion or attraction towards specific chemicals, has been a subject of investigation for over 100 years, resulting in detailed understanding of bacterial chemotaxis and the corresponding sensory…
The growth of bacterial flagellar filaments is a self-assembly process where flagellin molecules are transported through the narrow core of the flagellum and are added at the distal end. To model this situation, we generalize a growth…
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…
The flexibility of the bacterial flagellar hook is believed to have substantial consequences for microorganism locomotion. Using a simplified model of a rigid flagellum and a flexible hook, we show that the paths of axisymmetric cell bodies…
Multi-flagellated bacteria utilize the hydrodynamic interaction between their filamentary tails, known as flagella, to swim and change their swimming direction in low Reynolds number flow. This interaction, referred to as bundling and…
Traditional locomotion strategies become ineffective at low Reynolds numbers, where viscous forces predominate over inertial forces. To adapt, microorganisms have evolved specialized structures like cilia and flagella for efficient…
Cytoskeletal motor proteins are involved in major intracellular transport processes which are vital for maintaining appropriate cellular function. The motor exhibits distinct states of motility: active motion along filaments, and…
Molecular motors are in charge of almost every process in the life cycle of cells, such as protein synthesis, DNA replication, and cell locomotion, hence being of crucial importance for understanding the cellular dynamics. However, given…
Eukaryotic flagella are active structures with a complex architecture of microtubules, motor proteins and elastic links. They are capable of whiplike motions driven by motors sliding along filaments that are themselves constrained at an…
We present a model for a biological reactor in which bacteria tend to aggregate in flocs, as encountered in wastewater treatment plants. The influence of this flocculation on the growth dynamics of the bacteria is studied. We argue that a…
Active gels are a class of biologically-relevant material containing embedded agents that spontaneously generate forces acting on a sparse filament network. In vitro experiments of protein filaments and molecular motors have revealed a…
Switching of the direction of flagella rotations is the key control mechanism governing the chemotactic activity of E. coli and many other bacteria. Power-law distributions of switching times are most peculiar because their emergence cannot…
We discuss a theoretical model for bidirectional cargo transport in biological cells, which is driven by teams of molecular motors and subject to thermal fluctuations. The model describes explicitly the directed motion of the molecular…
Molecular motors perform active movements along cytoskeletal filaments and drive the traffic of organelles and other cargo particles in cells. In contrast to the macroscopic traffic of cars, however, the traffic of molecular motors is…
We discuss a two-dimensional model for the dynamics of axonemal deformations driven by internally generated forces of molecular motors. Our model consists of an elastic filament pair connected by active elements. We derive the dynamic…
{\it E. coli} bacteria swim in straight runs interrupted by sudden reorientation events called tumbles. The resulting random walks give rise to density fluctuations that can be derived analytically in the limit of non interacting particles…
Flagellated bacteria are hydrodynamically attracted to rigid walls, yet past work shows a 'hovering' state where they swim stably at a finite height above surfaces. We use numerics and theory to reveal the physical origin of hovering.…
In bacterial chemotaxis, E. coli cells drift up chemical gradients by a series of runs and tumbles. Runs are periods of directed swimming, and tumbles are abrupt changes in swimming direction. Near the beginning of each run, the rotating…
E.coli serves as prototype for the study of peritrichous enteric bacteria that perform runs and tumbles alternately. Bacteria run forward as a result of the counterclockwise (CCW) rotation of their flagella bundle and perform tumbles when…
We show that the flagellar beat of bull spermatozoa and Chlamydomonas Reinhardtii can be modelled by a minimal, geometrically nonlinear reaction-diffusion system. Model solutions are spatio-temporally animated patterns describing flagellar…