Related papers: Amoeboid swimming in a channel

Microorganism motility often takes place within complex, viscoelastic fluid environments, e.g., sperm in cervicovaginal mucus and bacteria in biofilms. In such complex fluids, strains and stresses generated by the microorganism are stored…

A variety of swimming microorganisms, called ciliates, exploit the bending of a large number of small and densely-packed organelles, termed cilia, in order to propel themselves in a viscous fluid. We consider a spherical envelope model for…

Many small organisms self-propel in viscous fluids using travelling wave-like deformation of their bodies or appendages. Examples include small nematodes moving through soil using whole-body undulations or spermatozoa swimming through mucus…

Locomotion and transport of microorganisms in fluids is an essential aspect of life. Search for food, orientation toward light, spreading of off-spring, and the formation of colonies are only possible due to locomotion. Swimming at the…

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,…

The hydrodynamics of a flagellated microorganism is investigated when swimming close to a planar free-slip surface by means of numerical solu- tions of the Stokes equations obtained via a Boundary Element Method. Depending on the initial…

Swimming eukaryotic microorganisms such as spermatozoa, algae and ciliates self-propel in viscous fluids using travelling wave-like deformations of slender appendages called flagella. Waves are predominant because Purcell's scallop theorem…

Concentrated suspensions of swimming microorganisms and other forms of active matter are known to display complex, self-organized spatio-temporal patterns on scales large compared to those of the individual motile units. Despite intensive…

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…

Cells and microorganisms adopt various strategies to migrate in response to different environmental stimuli. To date, many modeling research has focused on the crawling-based Dictyostelium discoideum (Dd) cells migration induced by…

Bacterial swimming is well characterized in uniform liquids at rest. The natural habitat of bacterial swimmers, however, is often dominated by moving fluids and interfaces, resulting in shear flows that may strongly alter bacterial…

Microswimmers and active colloids often move in confined systems, including those involving interfaces. Such interfaces, especially at the microscale, may deform in response to the stresses of the flow created by the active particle. We…

Some microorganisms, such as spermatozoa, synchronize their flagella when swimming in close proximity. Using a simplified model (two infinite, parallel, two-dimensional waving sheets), we show that phase-locking arises from hydrodynamics…

Geometric confinement plays an important role in the dynamics of natural and synthetic microswimmers from bacterial cells to self-propelled particles in high-throughput microfluidic devices. However, little is known about the effects of…

Swimming cells and microorganisms must often move though complex fluids that contain an immersed microstructure such as polymer molecules, or filaments. In many important biological processes, such as mammalian reproduction and bacterial…

The hydrodynamic flow field generated by self-propelled active particles and swimming microorganisms is strongly altered by the presence of nearby boundaries in a viscous flow. Using a simple model three-linked sphere swimmer, we show that…

Confinement and wall effects are known to affect the kinematics and propulsive characteristics of swimming microorganisms. When a solid body is dragged through a viscous fluid at constant velocity, the presence of a wall increases fluid…

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…

Cell migration is fundamental to development, tissue organization, immune response, and disease progression. Amoeboid motility is distinguished by rapid motion and strongly fluctuating cell shapes, reflecting the intrinsically nonlinear…

Biological microswimmers often encounter deformable boundaries in physiological conditions; for instance, the viscoelastic walls of reproductive tract during migration of spermatozoa, or host tissue during early bacterial biofilm formation.…