Related papers: Structure and function of Enterotoxigenic Escheric…
The bacterium E. coli maneuvers itself to regions with high chemoattractant concentrations by performing two stereotypical moves: `runs', in which it moves in near straight lines, and `tumbles', in which it does not advance but changes…
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…
We confine a dense suspension of motile \textit{Escherichia coli} inside a spherical droplet in a water-in-oil emulsion, creating a "bacterially" propelled droplet. We show that droplets move in a persistent random walk, with a persistence…
Soft substrates decorated with micropillar arrays are known to be sensitive to deflection due to capillary action. In this work, we demonstrate micropillared epoxy surfaces are sensitive to single drops of bacterial suspensions. The…
Filamentous cyanobacteria, forming long strands of connected cells, are one of the earliest and most successful forms of life on Earth. They exhibit self-organised behaviour, forming large-scale patterns in structures like biomats and…
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…
A detailed understanding of the interface between living cells and substrate materials is of rising importance in many fields of medicine, biology and biotechnology. Cells at interfaces often form epithelia. The physical barrier that they…
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…
In bacterial chemotaxis, E. coli cells drift up chemical gradients by a series of runs and tumbles. Runs are periods of directed swimming, and tumbles are abrupt changes in swimming direction. Near the beginning of each run, the rotating…
Increased Atmospheric CO2 to over 400 ppm has prompted global climate irregularities. Reducing the released CO2 from biotechnological processes could remediate these phenomena. In this study, we sought to find a solution to reduce the…
Densely packed, motile bacteria can adopt collective states not seen in conventional, passive materials. These states remain in many ways mysterious, and their physical characterization can aid our understanding of natural bacterial…
The metabolic network plays a crucial role in regulating bacterial metabolism and growth, but it is subject to inherent molecular stochasticity. Previous studies have utilized flux balance analysis and the maximum entropy method to predict…
Hospital-acquired infections represent significant health and financial burdens to society. Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) is a particularly challenging bacteria with the potential to cause severe diarrhea and death. One mode of…
Flagellated microorganisms overcome the low-Reynolds-number time reversibility by rotating helical flagella. For peritrichous bacteria, such as Escherichia coli, the randomly distributed flagellar filaments align along the same direction to…
The Shiga toxins comprise a family of related protein toxins secreted by certain types of bacteria. Shigella dysenteriae, some strain of Escherichia coli and other bacterias can express toxins which caused serious complication during the…
Run-and-tumble motility is widely used by swimming microorganisms including numerous prokaryotic eukaryotic organisms. Here, we experimentally investigate the run-and-tumble dynamics of the bacterium E. coli in polymeric solutions. We find…
The behavior of fluid interfaces far from equilibrium plays central roles in nature and in industry. Active swimmers trapped at interfaces can alter transport at fluid boundaries with far reaching implications. Swimmers can become trapped…
Escherichia coli is a motile bacterium that moves up a chemoattractant gradient by performing a biased random walk composed of alternating runs and tumbles. Previous models of run and tumble chemotaxis neglect one or more features of the…
Many bacteria rely on active cell appendages, such as type IV pili, to move over substrates and interact with neighboring cells. Here, we study the motion of individual cells and bacterial colonies, mediated by the collective interactions…
Iron is an essential trace-element for most organisms. However, because high concentration of free intracellular iron is cytotoxic, cells have developed complex regulatory networks that keep free intracellular iron concentration at optimal…