Related papers: Transport powered by bacterial turbulence
Bacteria can chemotactically migrate up attractant gradients by controlling run-and-tumble motility patterns. In addition to this well-known chemotactic behaviour, several soil and marine bacterial species perform chemokinesis: they adjust…
Self-sustained turbulent structures have been observed in a wide range of living fluids, yet no quantitative theory exists to explain their properties. We report experiments on active turbulence in highly concentrated 3D suspensions of…
Microbiology is the science of microbes, particularly bacteria. Many bacteria are motile: they are capable of self-propulsion. Among these, a significant class execute so-called run-and-tumble motion: they follow a fairly straight path for…
We use in vivo measurements of swimming bacteria in an optical trap to determine fundamental properties of bacterial propulsion. In particular, we determine the propulsion matrix, which relates the angular velocity of the flagellum to the…
Active systems comprised of self-propelled units show fascinating transitions from Brownian-like dynamics to collective coherent motion. Swirling of swimming bacteria is a spectacular example. This study demonstrates that a nematic liquid…
Transport of a moving V-shaped barrier exposed to a bath of chiral active particles is investigated in a two-dimensional channel. Due to the chirality of active particles and the transversal asymmetry of the barrier position, active…
From biofilm and colony formation in bacteria to wound healing and embryonic development in multicellular organisms, groups of living cells must often move collectively. While considerable study has probed the biophysical mechanisms of how…
We investigate the effects of heterogeneous (spatially varying) activity in a hydrodynamical model for dense bacterial suspensions, confining ourselves to experimentally realizable, simple, quenched, activity patterns. We show that the…
We investigate the effects of bacterial activity on the mixing and transport properties of a passive scalar in time-periodic flows in experiments and in a simple model. We focus on the interactions between swimming E. coli and the…
In systems as diverse as migrating mammals to road traffic, crowding acts to inhibit efficient collective movement. Bacteria, however, are observed to move in very dense groups containing billions of individuals without causing the gridlock…
Active turbulence, or chaotic self-organized collective motion, is often observed in concentrated suspensions of motile bacteria and other systems of self-propelled interacting agents. To date, there is no fundamental understanding of how…
Highly concentrated active agents tend to exhibit turbulent flows, reminiscent of classical hydrodynamic turbulence, which has attracted considerable attention lately. Controlling the so-called active turbulence has long been a challenge,…
Multicellular cable bacteria display an exceptional form of biological conduction, channeling electrical currents across centimeter distances through a regular network of protein fibers embedded in the cell envelope. The fiber conductivity…
Cells control the size and organization of biomolecular condensates formed by liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS), but multiple mechanisms likely contribute to this control and remain to be fully elucidated. Here we propose a…
Collective transport through channels shows surprising properties under one-dimensional confinement: particles in a single file exhibit sub-diffusive behavior, while liquid confinement causes distance-independent correlations between the…
We describe a new kind of self-propelling motion of bacteria based on the cooperative action of rotating flagella on the surface of bacteria. Describing the ensemble of rotating flagella in the framework of the hydrodynamics with spin the…
We study colonies of non-motile, rod-shaped bacteria growing on solid substrates. In our model, bacteria interact purely mechanically, by pushing each other away as they grow, and consume a diffusing nutrient. We show that mechanical…
Torque-driven microscale swimming robots, or microrotors, hold significant potential in biomedical applications such as targeted drug delivery, minimally invasive surgery, and micromanipulation. This paper addresses the challenge of…
Bacteria can spontaneously develop collective motions by aligning their motions in dense systems. Here, we show that bacteria can also respond collectively to an alternating electrical field and form dynamic clusters oscillating at the same…
We demonstrate that active carpets of bacteria or self-propelled colloids generate coherent flows towards the substrate, and propose that these currents provide efficient pathways to replenish nutrients that feed back into activity. A full…