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A great number of biological organisms live in aqueous environments. Major evolutionary transitions, including the emergence of life itself, likely occurred in such environments. While the chemical aspects of the role of water in biology…
Biological membranes are host to proteins and molecules which may form domain-like structures resulting in spatially-varying material properties. Vesicles with such heterogeneous membranes can exhibit intricate shapes at equilibrium and…
Cytoplasmic streaming, the persistent flow of fluid inside a cell, induces intracellular transport, which plays a key role in fundamental biological processes. In meiosis II mouse oocytes (developing egg cells) awaiting fertilisation, the…
From bacteria and sperm cells to artificial microrobots, self-propelled microscopic objects at low Reynolds numbers often perceive fluctuating mechanical and chemical stimuli and contact exterior wall boundaries both in nature and the…
The multicellular organization of diverse systems, such as embryos, intestines and tumours, relies on the coordinated migration of cells in 3D curved environments. In these settings, cells establish supracellular patterns of motion,…
In natural environments, solid surfaces present both opportunities and challenges for bacteria. On one hand, they serve as platforms for biofilm formation, crucial for bacterial colonization and resilience in harsh conditions. On the other…
Locomotion and transport of microorganisms in fluids is an essential aspect of life. Search for food, orientation toward light, spreading of off-spring, and the formation of colonies are only possible due to locomotion. Swimming at the…
Near a solid boundary, E. coli swims in clockwise circular motion. We provide a hydrodynamic model for this behavior. We show that circular trajectories are natural consequences of force-free and torque-free swimming, and the hydrodynamic…
A number of biological processes, such as embryo development, cancer metastasis or wound healing, rely on cells moving in concert. The mechanisms leading to the emergence of coordinated motion remain however largely unexplored. Although…
Recent advances in human mobility research have revealed consistent pairwise characteristics in movement behavior, yet existing mobility models often overlook the spatial and topological structure of mobility networks. By analyzing millions…
How systems are endowed with migration capacity is a fascinating question with implications ranging from the design of novel active systems to the control of microbial populations. Bacteria, which can be found in a variety of environments,…
Diverse processes--e.g. bioremediation, biofertilization, and microbial drug delivery--rely on bacterial migration in disordered, three-dimensional (3D) porous media. However, how pore-scale confinement alters bacterial motility is unknown…
We consider generalized models on coral broadcast spawning phenomena involving diffusion, advection, chemotaxis, and reactions when egg and sperm densities are different. We prove the global-in-time existence of the regular solutions of the…
Competition among gametes for fertilization imposes strong selection. For external fertilizers, this selective pressure extends to eggs for which spawning conditions can range from sperm limitation (competition among eggs) to sexual…
Microswimmers are exposed in nature to crowded environments and their transport properties depend in a subtle way on the interaction with obstacles. Here, we investigate a model for a single ideal circle swimmer exploring a two-dimensional…
Adhesion-independent migration is a prominent mode of cell motility in confined environments, yet the physical principles that guide such movement remain incompletely understood. We present a phase-field model for simulating the motility of…
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…
The ability of eukaryotic cells to squeeze through constrictions is limited by the stiffness of their large and rigid nucleus. However, migrating cells are often able to overcome this limitation and pass through constrictions much smaller…
Chiral active particles, or self-propelled circle swimmers, from sperm cells to asymmetric Janus colloids, form a rich set of patterns, which are different from those seen in linear swimmers. Such patterns have mainly been explored for…
Zooplankton live in dynamic environments where turbulence may challenge their limited swimming abilities. How this interferes with fundamental behavioral processes remains elusive. We reconstruct simultaneously the trajectories of flow…