Related papers: Multibody simulation of adhesion pili
Biopolymers are vital structures for many living organisms; for a variety of bacteria, adhesion polymers play a crucial role for the initiation of colonization. Some bacteria express, on their surface, attachment organelles (pili) that…
Uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) express various kinds of organelles, so-called pili or fimbriae, that mediate adhesion to host tissue in the urinary tract through specific receptor-adhesin interactions. The biomechanical properties of…
Type 1 fimbriae mediate adhesion of uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) to host cells. It has been hypothesized that fimbriae can, by their ability to uncoil under exposure to force, reduce fluid shear stress on the adhesin-receptor…
Escherichia coli and other bacteria use rotating helical filaments to swim. Each cell typically has about four filaments, which bundle or disperse depending on the sense of motor rotation. To study the bundling process, we built a…
The type 1 pilus is a bacterial filament consisting of a long coiled proteic chain of subunits joined together by non-covalent bonding between complementing $\beta$-strands. Its strength and structural stability are critical for its…
The ability of uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) to cause urinary tract infections is dependent on their ability to colonize the uroepithelium. Infecting bacteria ascend the urethra to the bladder and then kidneys by attaching to the…
Bacteria are prolific at colonizing diverse surfaces under a widerange of environmental conditions, and exhibit fascinating examples of self-organization across scales. Though it has recently attracted considerable interest, the role of…
We develop a numerical framework to simulate the locomotion of a flagellated bacterium with a spheroidal head (such as Escherichia coli) in biological fluids like mucus, which are entangled polymer solutions exhibiting elasto-viscoplastic…
The swimming properties of an E. coli-type model bacterium are investigated by mesoscale hy- drodynamic simulations, combining molecular dynamics simulations of the bacterium with the multiparticle particle collision dynamics method for the…
Colonies of bacteria endowed with a pili-based self-propulsion machinery are ideal models for investigating the structure and dynamics of active many-particle systems. We study Neisseria gonorrhoeae colonies with a molecular-dynamics-based…
Cell walls define a cell shape in bacteria. They are rigid to resist large internal pressures, but remarkably plastic to adapt to a wide range of external forces and geometric constraints. Currently, it is unknown how bacteria maintain…
Microswimmers such as E. Coli bacteria accumulate and exhibit an intriguing dynamics near walls, governed by hydrodynamic and steric interactions. Insight into the underlying mechanisms and predominant interactions demand a detailed…
Motility is fundamental to the survival and proliferation of microorganisms. The E. coli bacterium propels itself using a bundle of rotating helical flagella. If one flagellum reverses its rotational direction, it leaves the bundle,…
Surface-adhesion and stiffness of underlying substrates mediate geometry, mechanics and self-organization of bacterial colonies. Recent studies have qualitatively indicted that stiffness may impact bacterial attachment, yet the variation of…
We study a minimal extension of the worm-like chain to describe polypeptides having alpha-helical secondary structure. In this model presence/absence of secondary structure enters as a scalar variable that controls the local chain bending…
The accumulation of swimming bacteria near surfaces may lead to biological processes such as biofilm formation and wound infection. Previous experimental observations of Vibrio alginolyticus showed an interesting correlation between the…
The twisting and writhing of a cell body and associated mechanical stresses is an underappreciated constraint on microbial self-propulsion. Multi-flagellated bacteria can even buckle and writhe under their own activity as they swim through…
Force-induced reversible transformations between coiled and normal polymorphs of bacterial flagella have been observed in recent optical-tweezer experiment. We introduce a discrete elastic rod model with two competing helical states…
We study the transport of bacteria in a porous media modeled by a square channel containing one cylindrical obstacle via molecular dynamics simulations coupled to a lattice Boltzmann fluid. Our bacteria model is a rod-shaped rigid body…
The study of the interactions of living adherent cells with mechanically stable (visco)elastic materials enables understanding and exploiting physiological phenomena mediated by cell-extracellular communication. However, insight on the…