Related papers: Emergent pattern formation in an interstitial biof…
One of the most challenging problems in microbiology is to understand how a small fraction of microbes that resists killing by antibiotics can emerge in a population of genetically identical cells, the phenomenon known as persistence or…
Biological evolution of a population is governed by the fitness landscape, which is a map from genotype to fitness. However, a fitness landscape depends on the organisms environment, and evolution in changing environments is still poorly…
Emergence of regular spatial patterns is a hallmark in living matter ranging from subcellular organelles to developing embryos and to ecosystems. Mechanisms for the formation of ordered spatial patterns in biology often require chemical…
Many organisms form colonies for a transient period of time to withstand environmental pressure. Bacterial biofilms are a prototypical example of such behavior. Despite significant interest across disciplines, physical mechanisms governing…
Flagellar-driven locomotion plays a critical role in bacterial attachment and colonization of surfaces, contributing to the risks of contamination and infection. Tremendous attempts to uncover the underlying principles governing bacterial…
Bacterial biofilms cost an enormous amount of resources in the health, medical, and industrial sectors. To understand early biofilm formation, beginning from planktonic states of active bacterial suspensions (such as Escherichia coli) to…
The field of active matter explores the behaviors of self propelled agents out of equilibrium, with active suspensions, such as swimming bacteria in solutions, serving as impactful models. These systems exhibit spatio-temporal patterns akin…
Recent advances in microscopy techniques has uncovered unique aspects of flagella-driven motility in bacteria. A remarkable example is the discovery of flagellar wrapping, a phenomenon whereby a bacterium wraps its flagellum (or flagellar…
In some conditions, bacteria self-organise into biofilms, supracellular structures made of a self-produced embedding matrix, mainly composed on polysaccharides, DNA, proteins and lipids. It is known that bacteria change their colony/matrix…
How motile bacteria move near a surface is a problem of fundamental biophysical interest and is key to the emergence of several phenomena of biological, ecological and medical relevance, including biofilm formation. Solid boundaries can…
Periodic wrinkling of a rigid capping layer on a deformable substrate provides a useful method for templating surface topography for a variety of novel applications. Many experiments have studied wrinkle formation during the compression of…
Bacteria living on surfaces are often confined to droplets. When these droplets evaporate, the motion of the liquid-air interface and the associated internal capillary flow confine the bacteria. Here we study how \emph{E. coli} bacteria…
Thin film dynamics and associated instability mechanisms have triggered a wide range of scientific innovations, as attributed to their abilities of creating fascinating patterns over small scales. Here, we demonstrate a new thin film…
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…
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,…
Bacteria generally live in complicated structures called biofilms, consisting of communicating bacterial colonies and extracellular polymeric substance (EPS). Since biofilms are related to detrimental effects such as infection or antibiotic…
Communication between cells is realized by exchange of biochemical substances. Due to internal organization of living systems and variability of external parameters, the exchange is heavily influenced by perturbations of various parameters…
Bacteria are prolific at colonizing diverse surfaces under a widerange of environmental conditions, and exhibit fascinating examples of self-organization across scales. Though it has recently attracted considerable interest, the role of…
A thin-walled tube, e.g., a drinking straw, manifests an instability when bent by localizing the curvature change in a small region. This instability has been extensively studied since the seminal work of Brazier nearly a century ago.…
Many animals in their natural habitat exhibit collective motion and form complex patterns to tackle environmental difficulties. Several physical and biological factors, such as animal motility, population densities, and chemical cues, play…