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From bacteria and sperm cells to artificial microrobots, self-propelled microscopic objects at low Reynolds numbers often perceive fluctuating mechanical and chemical stimuli and contact exterior wall boundaries both in nature and the…
Swimming micro-organisms such as flagellated bacteria and sperm cells have fascinating locomotion capabilities. Inspired by their natural motion, there is an ongoing effort to develop artificial robotic nano-swimmers for potential in-body…
Despite their vast morphological diversity, many invertebrates have similar larval forms characterized by ciliary bands, innervated arrays of beating cilia that facilitate swimming and feeding. Hydrodynamics suggests that these bands should…
In many situations bacteria move in complex environments, as for example in soils, oceans or the human gut-track microbiome. In these natural environments, carrier fluids such as mucus or reproductive fluids show complex structure…
We study the stochastic force dynamics of a model microswimmer (Chlamydomonas reinhardtii), using a combined experimental, theoretical, and numerical approach. While swimming dynamics have been extensively studied using hydrodynamic…
Hydrodynamics and confinement dominate bacterial mobility near solid or air-water boundaries, causing flagellated bacteria to move in circular trajectories. This phenomenon results from the counter-rotation between the bacterial body and…
Various microorganisms and some mammalian cells are able to swim in viscous fluids by performing nonreciprocal body deformations, such as rotating attached flagella or by distorting their entire body. In order to perform chemotaxis, i.e. to…
One approach to quantifying biological diversity consists of characterizing the statistical distribution of specific properties of a taxonomic group or habitat. Microorganisms living in fluid environments, and for whom motility is key,…
Interaction of swimming bacteria with flows controls their ability to explore complex environments, crucial to many societal and environmental challenges and relevant for microfluidic applications as cell sorting. Combining experimental,…
The propulsion of mammalian spermatozoa relies on the spontaneous periodic oscillation of their flagella. These oscillations are driven internally by the coordinated action of ATP-powered dynein motors that exert sliding forces between…
We investigate a stochastic individual-based model for the population dynamics of host-virus systems where the microbial hosts may transition into a dormant state upon contact with virions, thus evading infection. Such a contact-mediated…
We study the coupled hydrodynamics between a motile slender microswimmer and a deformable interface that separates two Newtonian fluid regions. From the disturbance field generated by the swimming motion, we quantitatively characterize the…
Biofilms are spatially organized microorganism colonies embedded in a self-produced matrix, conferring to the microbial community resistance to environmental stresses. Motile bacteria have been observed swimming in the matrix of pathogenic…
Biological microswimmers alter their motility in complex corner geometries, facilitating their survival. However, the dynamical features of low-Reynolds-number swimming at corners remain undefined. Here, we use active droplet microswimmers…
When swimming at low Reynolds numbers, inertial effects are negligible and reciprocal movements cannot induce net motion. Instead, symmetry breaking is necessary to achieve net propulsion. Directed swimming can be supported by magnetic…
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…
Self-propelled microorganisms, such as unicellular algae or bacteria, swim along their director relative to the fluid velocity. Under a steady shear flow the director rotates in close orbit, a periodic structure that is preserved under an…
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…
Motivated by recent experiments of motile bacteria crossing liquid-liquid interfaces of isotropic- nematic coexistence (Cheon et al., Soft Matter 20: 7313-7320, 2024), we study the dynamics of prolate microswimmers traversing clean…
Understanding flow and transport of bacteria in porous media is crucial to technologies such as bioremediation, biomineralization or enhanced oil recovery. While physicochemical bacteria filtration is well-documented, recent studies showed…