Related papers: Chemotactic Maneuverability of Sperm
Many motile biological cells navigate along concentration gradients of signaling molecules: This chemotaxis guides for instance sperm cells from marine invertebrates, which have to find egg cells in the ocean. While chemotaxis has been…
A major puzzle in biology is how mammalian sperm determine and maintain the correct swimming direction during the various phases of the sexual reproduction process. Whilst chemotaxis is assumed to dominate in the immediate vicinity of the…
Active swimmers are ubiquitous in nature, found in many diverse biological systems ranging from bacteria to vertebrate fish. Of particular importance are sperm cells which are swimmers that are crucial for the survival of many species…
Chemotaxis of bacterial swimmers that move in a run-and-turn pattern is well studied in uniform bulk fluid. It is primarily based on modulating the run time in dependence on the swimming direction with respect to the source of…
The migratory abilities of motile human spermatozoa in vivo are essential for natural fertility, but it remains a mystery what properties distinguish the tens of cells which find an egg from the millions of cells ejaculated. To reach the…
We study the chemotaxis of a population of genetically identical swimming bacteria undergoing run and tumble dynamics driven by stochastic switching between clockwise and counterclockwise rotation of the flagellar rotary system.…
Chemotaxis, the directional locomotion of cells towards a source of a chemical gradient, is an integral part of many biological processes - for example, bacteria motion, single-cell or multicellular organisms development, immune response,…
Swimming cells and microorganisms are as diverse in their collective dynamics as they are in their individual shapes and propulsion mechanisms. Even for sperm cells, which have a stereotyped shape consisting of a cell body connected to a…
One of simplest examples of navigation found in nature is run-and-tumble chemotaxis. Tumbles reorient cells randomly, and cells can drift toward attractants or away from repellents by biasing the frequency of these events. The post-tumble…
Biological tissues have been observed to display emergent fluid-like properties, owing to physical interactions between cells. However, it remains unclear in general how these fluid-like properties affect tissue structure and function.…
The propulsion of mammalian spermatozoa relies on the spontaneous periodic oscillation of their flagella. These oscillations are driven internally by the coordinated action of ATP-powered dynein motors that exert sliding forces between…
Recent research has shown that motile cells can adapt their mode of propulsion to the mechanical properties of the environment in which they find themselves--crawling in some environments while swimming in others. The latter can involve…
Microorganisms can preferentially orient and move along gradients of a chemo-attractant (i.e., chemotax) while colonies of many microorganisms can collectively undergo complex dynamics in response to chemo-attractants that they themselves…
Escherichia coli is a motile bacterium that moves up a chemoattractant gradient by performing a biased random walk composed of alternating runs and tumbles. This paper presents calculations of the chemotactic drift velocity vd (the mean…
Chemotaxis along helical paths towards a target releasing a chemoattractant is found in sperm cells and many microorganisms. We discuss the stochastic differential geometry of the noisy helical swimming path of a chiral swimmer. A chiral…
Bacterial swimming is well characterized in uniform liquids at rest. The natural habitat of bacterial swimmers, however, is often dominated by moving fluids and interfaces, resulting in shear flows that may strongly alter bacterial…
Chemotaxis and haptotaxis have been a main theme in the macroscopic study of bacterial and cellular motility. In this work we investigate the influence these processes have on the shape and motility of fast migrating cells. We note that…
Microorganism motility often takes place within complex, viscoelastic fluid environments, e.g., sperm in cervicovaginal mucus and bacteria in biofilms. In such complex fluids, strains and stresses generated by the microorganism are stored…
We discuss recent progress in the theoretical description of chemotaxis by coupling the diffusion equation of a chemical species to equations describing the motion of sensing microorganisms. In particular, we discuss models for…
Living cells are capable of interacting with their environments in a variety of ways, including cell signalling, adhesion, and directed motion. These behaviours are often mediated by receptor molecules embedded in the cell membrane, which…