Related papers: Biopolymer dynamics driven by helical flagella
We employ mesoscopic simulations to study active polymers in a solvent via multi-particle collision dynamics. We investigate linear chains in which either the head or tail monomer exerts an active force, directed away from or towards its…
The slip phenomena in thin polymer films confined by either flat or periodically corrugated surfaces are investigated by molecular dynamics and continuum simulations. For atomically flat surfaces and weak wall-fluid interactions, the shear…
The quasi-equilibrium evolution of the helical fraction occurring in a biopolymer network (gelatin gel) under an applied stress has been investigated by observing modulation in its optical activity. Its variation with the imposed chain…
Active matter agents consume internal energy or extract energy from the environment for locomotion and force generation. Already rather generic models, such as ensembles of active Brownian particles, exhibit phenomena, which are absent at…
We study the segregation of motile semiflexible filaments from a background of similar but non-motile filaments. Our Langevin dynamics simulations reveal a wide range of emergent structures governed by filament flexibility and activity,…
Dynamic organization of the cytoskeletal filaments and rod-like proteins in the cell membrane and other biological interfaces occurs in many cellular processes. Previous modeling studies have considered the dynamics of a single rod on fluid…
We run numerical simulations of strongly confined suspensions of model spherical swimmers called "squirmers". Because of the confinement, the Stokeslet dipoles generated by the particles are quickly screened and the far-field flow is…
We investigate the hydrodynamic stability and the formation of patterns in a continuum model of epithelial layers, able to account for the interplay between mechanical activity, lateral adhesion and the $6-$fold orientational order…
We reveal that the mechanical pulsation of locally synchronised particles is a generic route to propagate deformation waves. We consider a model of dense repulsive particles whose activity drives periodic change in size of each individual.…
Using Langevin simulations, we find that simple 'generic' bead-and-spring homopolymer chains in a sufficiently bad solvent spontaneously develop helical order during the process of collapsing from an initially stretched conformation. The…
Following up a recent paper on grafted sliding polymer layers (Macromolecules 2005, 38, 1434-1441), we investigated the influence of the sliding degree of freedom on the self-assembly of sliding polymeric surfactants that can be obtained by…
Configurations of a single semiflexible polymer is studied when it is pushed into a nanochannel in the case where the polymer persistence length $l_p$ is much longer than the channel diameter $D$, i.e. $l_p/D \gg 1$. Using numerical…
Micro-organisms propel themselves in viscous environments by the periodic, nonreciprocal beating of slender appendages known as flagella. Active materials have been widely exploited to mimic this form of locomotion. However, the realization…
The present habilitation thesis in theoretical biological physics addresses two central dynamical processes in cells and organisms: (i) active motility and motility control and (ii) self-organized pattern formation. The unifying theme is…
Flagellated bacteria on nutrient-rich substrates can differentiate into a swarming state and move in dense swarms across surfaces. A recent experiment measured the flow in the fluid around an Escherichia coli swarm (Wu, Hosu and Berg, 2011…
The coupled dynamics of entangled polymers which span a broad time and length scales govern the unique viscoelastic properties of polymers. To follow chain mobility by numerical simulations from the intermediate Rouse and reptation regimes…
Bacteria suspension exhibits a wide range of collective phenomena arising from interactions between individual cells. Here we show Serratia marcescens cells near an air-liquid interface spontaneously aggregate into dynamic clusters through…
Flagella and cilia are examples of actively oscillating, whiplike biological filaments that are crucial to processes as diverse as locomotion, mucus clearance, embryogenesis and cell motility. Elastic driven rod-like filaments subjected to…
Systems of spherical particles moving in Stokes flow are studied for a different particle internal structure and boundaries, including the Navier-slip model. It is shown that their hydrodynamic interactions are well described by treating…
The interaction of surfaces in relative motion in wet environments is dominated by lubrication forces, which play a pivotal role in the dynamics of microscopic systems. Here, we develop motile vesicles that exploit lubrication forces to…