Related papers: Beat regulation in twisted axonemes
Cell motility in viscous fluids is ubiquitous and affects many biological processes, including reproduction, infection, and the marine life ecosystem. Here we review the biophysical and mechanical principles of locomotion at the small…
Active droplets are artificial microswimmers built from a liquid dispersion by microfluidic tools and showing self-propelled motion. These systems hold particular interest for mimicking biological phenomena, such as some aspects of cell…
Several excitable systems, such as the heart, self-organize into complex spatio-temporal patterns that involve wave collisions, wave breaks, and rotating vortices, of which the dynamics are incompletely understood. Recently, conduction…
We have used numerical simulations to investigate how the properties of motor proteins control the dynamical behavior of a driven flexible filament. The filament is pinned at one end and positioned on top of a patch of anchored motor…
We theoretically study the effects of electron-electron interaction in twisted bilayer graphene in applied transverse dc electric field. When the twist angle is not very small, the electronic spectrum of the bilayer consists of four Dirac…
In the cellular phenomena of cytoplasmic streaming, molecular motors carrying cargo along a network of microtubules entrain the surrounding fluid. The piconewton forces produced by individual motors are sufficient to deform long…
The time dynamics of flagellar and ciliary beating is often neglected in theories of microswimmers, with the most common models prescribing a time-constant actuation of the surrounding fluid. By explicitly introducing a metachronal wave,…
Neuronal function requires precise spatial organization of mitochondria to meet localized energetic demand. However, the physical constraints governing mitochondrial transport in axons remain poorly defined. Bidirectional motor-driven…
How internal forces are transduced into motion through soft, fluid membranes remains a fundamental question in the study of active systems. To investigate this coupling, we develop a minimal system consisting of a single ferromagnetic…
In this paper, we analyze the inverse dynamics and control of a bacteria-inspired uniflagellar robot in a fluid medium at low Reynolds number. Inspired by the mechanism behind the locomotion of flagellated bacteria, we consider a robot…
We present results of twisted plasma waves driven by twisted ponderomotive force. With beating of two, co-propagating, Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) orbital angular momentum (OAM) laser pulses with different frequencies and also different twist…
Many eukaryotic cells use the active waving motion of flexible flagella to self-propel in viscous fluids. However, the criteria governing the selection of particular flagellar waveforms among all possible shapes has proved elusive so far.…
Large arrays of active cilia coordinate their beat cycles into metachronal waves. These waves can travel in different directions with respect to the cilium's beat direction and the resulting direction of fluid propulsion. Hydrodynamic…
Filopodia are actin-rich structures, present on the surface of practically every known eukaryotic cell. These structures play a pivotal role in specific cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions by allowing cells to explore their environment,…
Actin flow in the cortical cytoskeleton underneath the cell membrane generates mechanical stresses that shape the cell surface. We study this mechanism using a hydrodynamic model of a compressible active gel polymerizing at the membrane and…
The acoustofluidic method holds great promise for manipulating microorganisms. When exposed to the steady vortex structures of acoustic streaming flow, these microorganisms exhibit intriguing dynamic behaviors, such as hydrodynamic trapping…
We explore the locomotion of soft robots in granular medium (GM) resulting from the elastic deformation of slender rods. A low-cost, rapidly fabricable robot inspired by the physiological structure of bacteria is presented. It consists of a…
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…
Active particles (living or synthetic) often move through inhomogeneous environments, such as gradients in light, heat or nutrient concentration, that can lead to directed motion (or taxis). Recent research has explored inhomogeneity in the…
We create a mechanism inspired by bacterial swimmers, featuring two flexible flagella with individual control over rotation speed and direction in viscous fluid environments. Using readily available materials, we design and fabricate…