Related papers: Finding the ciliary beating pattern with optimal e…
Most bacteria swim through fluids by rotating helical flagella which can take one of twelve distinct polymorphic shapes. The most common helical waveform is the "normal" form, used during forward swimming runs. To shed light on the…
Biological systems are robust to perturbations at both the genetic and environmental levels. Yet, these same perturbations can elicit variation in behavior. The interplay between functional robustness and behavioral variability is…
We propose a computational method to solve optimal swimming problems, based on the boundary integral formulation of the hydrodynamic interaction between swimmer and surrounding fluid and direct constrained minimization of the energy…
Surface interactions provide a class of mechanisms which can be employed for propulsion of micro- and nanometer sized particles. We investigate the related efficiency of externally and self-propelled swimmers. A general scaling relation is…
Recent experiments proposed to use confined bacteria in order to generate flows near surfaces. We develop a mathematical and a computational model of this fluid transport using a linear superposition of fundamental flow singularities. The…
It has been shown that a nanoliter chamber separated by a wall of asymmetric obstacles can lead to an inhomogeneous distribution of self-propelled microorganisms. Although it is well established that this rectification effect arises from…
Most bacteria are driven by the cilia or flagella, consisting of a long filament and a rotary molecular motor through a short flexible hook. The beating pattern of these filaments shows synchronization properties from hydrodynamic…
Swimming organisms can escape their predators by creating and harnessing unsteady flow fields through their body motions. Stochastic optimization and flow simulations have identified escape patterns that are consistent with those observed…
Cilia are ubiquitous organelles involves in eukaryotic motility. They are long, slender, and motile protrusions from the cell body. They undergo active regular oscillatory beating patterns that can propel cells, such as the algae…
Cells swimming in viscous fluids create flow fields which influence the transport of relevant nutrients, and therefore their feeding rate. We propose a modeling approach to the problem of optimal feeding at zero Reynolds number. We consider…
One approach to quantifying biological diversity consists of characterizing the statistical distribution of specific properties of a taxonomic group or habitat. Microorganisms living in fluid environments, and for whom motility is key,…
Cilia are elastic hairlike protuberances of the cell membrane found in various unicellular organisms and in several tissues of most living organisms. In some tissues such as the airway tissues of the lung, the coordinated beating of cilia…
Simple, linear equations relate microscopic swimmers to the corresponding gliders and pumps. They have the following set of consequences: The swimming velocity of free swimmers can be inferred from the force on the tethered swimmer and vice…
The schooling behavior of fish can be studied through simulations involving a large number of interacting particles. In such systems, each individual particle is guided by behavior rules, which include aggregation towards a centroid,…
The swimming of a sphere immersed in a viscous incompressible fluid with inertia is studied for surface modulations of small amplitude on the basis of the Navier-Stokes equations. The mean swimming velocity and the mean rate of dissipation…
A remarkable variety of organisms use metachronal coordination (i.e., numerous neighboring appendages beating sequentially with a fixed phase lag) to swim or pump fluid. This coordination strategy is used by microorganisms to break symmetry…
Despite their vast morphological diversity, many invertebrates have similar larval forms characterized by ciliary bands, innervated arrays of beating cilia that facilitate swimming and feeding. Hydrodynamics suggests that these bands should…
Understanding and optimizing the design of helical micro-swimmers is crucial for advancing their application in various fields. This study presents an innovative approach combining Free-Form Deformation with Bayesian Optimization to enhance…
Limbless crawling is ubiquitous in biology, from cells to organisms. We develop and analyze a model for the dynamics of one-dimensional elastic crawlers, subject to active stress and deformation-dependent friction with the substrate. We…
Cilia and flagella often exhibit synchronized behavior; this includes phase locking, as seen in {\it Chlamydomonas}, and metachronal wave formation in the respiratory cilia of higher organisms. Since the observations by Gray and Rothschild…