Related papers: Bacterial chemotaxis: information processing, ther…
Bacterial migration through confined spaces is critical for several phenomena like: biofilm formation, bacterial transport in soils, and bacterial therapy against cancer . In the present work, \textit{E. coli} (strain K12-MG1655 WT)…
Phototaxis is an important reaction to light displayed by a wide range of motile microorganisms. Flagellated eukaryotic microalgae in particular, like the model organism Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, steer either towards or away from light by…
Eukaryotic cells are able to sense chemical gradients in a wide range of environments. We show that, if a cell is exposed to a highly variable environment, it may gain chemotactic accuracy by expressing multiple receptor types with varying…
Living systems contain intricate biochemical networks whose structure is closely related to their function and allows them to exhibit robust behavior in the presence of external stimuli. Such networks typically involve catalytic enzymes,…
Given the stochastic nature of gene expression, genetically identical cells exposed to the same environmental inputs will produce different outputs. This heterogeneity has been hypothesized to have consequences for how cells are able to…
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.…
Active particles with their characteristic feature of self-propulsion are regarded as the simplest models for motility in living systems. The accumulation of active particles in low activity regions has led to the general belief that…
Chemotaxis is typically modeled in the context of cellular motion towards a static, exogenous source of chemoattractant. Here, we propose a time-dependent mechanism of chemotaxis in which a self-propelled particle ({\it e.g.}, a cell)…
Biological systems are promising substrates for computation because they naturally process environmental information through complex internal dynamics. In this study, we investigate whether bacterial metabolic models can act as physical…
Biological sensory systems react to changes in their surroundings. They are characterized by fast response and slow adaptation to varying environmental cues. Insofar as sensory adaptive systems map environmental changes to changes of their…
Many biological processes can be thought of as the result of an underlying dynamics in which the system repeatedly undergoes distinct and abortive trajectories with the dynamical process only ending when some specific process, purpose,…
Cells frequently employ extracellular vesicles, or exosomes, to signal across long distances and coordinate collective actions. Exosomes diffuse slowly, can be actively degraded, and contain stochastic amounts of molecular cargo. These…
In the present work we simulate the basic two-dimensional dynamics of swarming E. coli bacteria on the surface of a moderately soft agar plate. Individual bacteria are modelled by self-propelled ridged bodies (agents), which interact with…
Quantitative models of associative learning that explain the behavior of real animals with high precision have turned out very difficult to construct. We do this in the context of the dynamics of the thermal preference of C. elegans. For…
Life is characterized by a myriad of complex dynamic processes allowing organisms to grow, reproduce, and evolve. Physical approaches for describing systems out of thermodynamic equilibrium have been increasingly applied to living systems,…
We study the chemotaxis of a population of genetically identical swimming bacteria undergoing run and tumble dynamics driven by stochastic switching between clockwise and counterclockwise rotation of the flagellar rotary system.…
Bacterial swarming is a rapid mass-migration, in which thousands of cells spread collectively to colonize a surface. Physically, swarming is a natural example of active particles that use energy to generate motion. Accordingly,…
Experiments have recently shown the feasibility of utilising bacteria as micro-scale robotic devices, with special attention paid to the development of bacteria-driven micro-swimmers taking advantage of built-in actuation and sensing…
Collective migration -- the directed, coordinated motion of many self-propelled agents -- is a fascinating emergent behavior exhibited by active matter that has key functional implications for biological systems. Extensive studies have…
Particles that are catalytically-active and chemotactic can interact through the concentration fields upon which they act, which in turn may lead to wide-scale spatial self-organization. When these active particles interact through several…