Related papers: Ciliary contact interactions dominate surface scat…
Biological membranes are complex, dynamic structures essential for cellular compartmentalization, signaling, and mechanical integrity. The molecular organization of eukaryotic membranes has been extensively studied, including the lipid…
A number of swimming microorganisms such as ciliates ($\textit{Opalina}$) and multicellular colonies of flagellates ($\textit{Volvox}$) are approximately spherical in shape and swim using beating arrays of cilia or short flagella covering…
The dynamic interactions between pairs of swimming microorganisms underpin the collective behaviour of larger suspensions, but accurately calculating pairwise collisions has typically required the use of numerical simulations in which…
In tissues as diverse as amphibian skin and the human airway, the cilia that propel fluid are grouped in sparsely distributed multiciliated cells (MCCs). We investigate fluid transport in this "mosaic" architecture, with emphasis on the…
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…
The swimming motility of bacteria is driven by the action of bacterial flagellar motors, whose outermost structure is a long and thin helicoidal filament. When rotated, the fluid medium exerts an anisotropic viscous drag on the flagellar…
Water-phospholipid interactions at the lipid bilayer/water interfaces are of essential importance for the dynamics, stability and function of biological membrane, and are also strongly associated with numerous biological processes at the…
Bacteria in aquatic environments often interact with particulate matter. A key example is bacterial degradation of marine snow responsible for carbon export from the upper ocean in the biological pump. The ecological interaction between…
Motile cilia are slender, hair-like cellular appendages that spontaneously oscillate under the action of internal molecular motors and are typically found in dense arrays. These active filaments coordinate their beating to generate…
Many microorganisms take a chiral path while swimming in an ambient uid. In this paper, we study the combined behavior of two chiral swimmers using the well-known squirmer model taking into account chiral asymmetries. In contrast to the…
The near-surface swimming patterns of bacteria are strongly determined by the hydrodynamic interactions between bacteria and the surface, which trap bacteria in smooth circular trajectories that lead to inefficient surface exploration.…
We use boundary element simulations to study the interaction of model microswimmers with a neutrally buoyant spherical particle. The ratio of the size of the particle to that of the swimmer is varied from $R^\mathrm{P} / R^\mathrm{S} \ll…
The flagellated bacterium Escherichia coli is increasingly used experimentally as a self-propelled swimmer. To obtain meaningful, quantitative results that are comparable between different laboratories, reproducible protocols are needed to…
Microscale fluid flows generated by ensembles of beating eukaryotic flagella are crucial to fundamental processes such as development, motility and sensing. Despite significant experimental and theoretical progress, the underlying physical…
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,…
Several micro-organisms, such as bacteria, algae, or spermatozoa, use flagella or cilia to swim in a fluid, while many other micro-organisms instead use ample shape deformation, described as amoeboid, to propel themselves by either crawling…
Conjugation accelerates bacterial evolution by enabling bacteria to acquire genes horizontally from their neighbors. Plasmid donors must physically encounter and connect with recipients to allow plasmid transfer, and different environments…
Peritrichously-flagellated bacteria, such as Escherichia coli, self-propel in fluids by using specialised motors to rotate multiple helical filaments. The rotation of each motor is transmitted to a short flexible segment called the hook…
Clays control carbon, water and nutrient transport in the lithosphere, promote cloud formation5 and lubricate fault slip through interactions among hydrated mineral interfaces. Clay mineral properties are difficult to model because their…
Bacterial contamination of biological conducts, catheters or water resources is a major threat to public health and can be amplified by the ability of bacteria to swim upstream. The mechanisms of this rheotaxis, the reorientation with…