Related papers: Flagella bending affects macroscopic properties of…
The role of activity on the hydrodynamic dispersion of bacteria in a model porous medium is studied by tracking thousands of bacteria in a microfluidic chip containing randomly placed pillars. We first evaluate the spreading dynamics of two…
Cell membranes are anchored to the cytoskeleton via immobile inclusions. We investigate the effect of such anchors on the in-plane dynamics of a fluid membrane and mobile inclusions (proteins) embedded in it. The immobile particles lead to…
Navigation of microorganisms is controlled by internal processes ultimately sensitive to mechanical or chemical signaling encountered along the path. In many natural environments, such as porous soils or physiological ducts, motile species…
Bacteria can spontaneously develop collective motions by aligning their motions in dense systems. Here, we show that bacteria can also respond collectively to an alternating electrical field and form dynamic clusters oscillating at the same…
The nature of physical processes can depend substantially on the dimensionality of a system. One such example are buckling instabilities, which arise from the competition between axial compression and bending in elastic filaments. Thus,…
The bending rigidity $k_c$ of bilayer vesicles self-assembled from amphiphilic diblock copolymers has been measured using single and dual-micropipet techniques. These copolymers are nearly a factor of 5 greater in hydrophobic membrane…
We study the rheological behaviour of a dense bidispersed suspension varying the relative size of the two dispersed phases. The main outcome of our analysis is that an enhanced flowability (reduced relative viscosity) of the suspension can…
When swimming in close proximity, some microorganisms such as spermatozoa synchronize their flagella. Previous work on swimming sheets showed that such synchronization requires a geometrical asymmetry in the flagellar waveforms. Here we…
Flagellated bacteria exploiting helical propulsion are known to swim along circular trajectories near surfaces. Fluid dynamics predicts this circular motion to be clockwise (CW) above a rigid surface (when viewed from inside the fluid) and…
Mechanical properties of disordered materials are governed by their underlying free energy landscape. In contrast to external fields, embedding a small fraction of active particles within a disordered material generates non-equilibrium…
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…
Bacterial cellulose is an important class of biomaterials which can be grown in well-controlled laboratory and industrial conditions. The cellulose structure is affected by several biological, chemical and environmental factors, including…
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…
Dynamics of a single vesicle under shear flow between two parallel plates is studied using two-dimensional lattice-Boltzmann simulations. We first present how we adapted the lattice-Boltzmann method to simulate vesicle dynamics, using an…
Bubbles at a free surface surface usually burst in ejecting myriads of droplets. Focusing on the bubble bursting jet, prelude for these aerosols, we propose a simple scaling for the jet velocity and we unravel experimentally the intricate…
Adhesive cell-substrate interactions are crucial for cell motility and are responsible for the necessary traction that propels cells. These interactions can also change the shape of the cell, analogous to liquid droplet wetting on adhesive…
We study the effect of isotropic porous walls on a plane Couette flow laden with spherical and rigid particles. We perform a parametric study varying the volume fraction between $0$ and $30\%$, the porosity between $0.3$ and $0.9$ and the…
Collective behavior of bacterial colonies plays critical roles in adaptability, survivability, biofilm expansion and infection. We employ an individual-based model of an interstitial biofilm to study emergent pattern formation based on the…
In this article, the effect of diffuse flux in the absence of direct collimated flux on the onset of phototactic bioconvection is investigated. The main effect of diffuse flux in the absence of collimated flux is on the swimming behaviour…
Microorganisms are ubiquitous in nature and technology. They inhabit diverse environments ranging from small river tributaries and lakes to oceans, as well as wastewater treatment plants and food manufacturing. In many of these…