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We describe a computational model for studying the complexity of self-assembled structures with active molecular components. Our model captures notions of growth and movement ubiquitous in biological systems. The model is inspired by…
Active propulsion, as performed by bacteria and Janus particles, in combination with hydrodynamic interaction results in the accumulation of bacteria at a flat wall. However, in microfluidic devices with cylindrical pillars of sufficiently…
Run-and-tumble motility is widely used by swimming microorganisms including numerous prokaryotic eukaryotic organisms. Here, we experimentally investigate the run-and-tumble dynamics of the bacterium E. coli in polymeric solutions. We find…
We propose a simple model of self-propelled particles to show that coherent structures, such as jets and swirls, can arise from a plausible microscopic mechanisms: (i) the elongated shape of the self-propelled particles with (ii) the…
Bacteria can exploit mechanics to display remarkable plasticity in response to locally changing physical and chemical conditions. Compliant structures play a striking role in their taxis behavior, specifically for navigation inside complex…
Building structures with hierarchical order through the self-assembly of smaller blocks is not only a prerogative of nature, but also a strategy to design artificial materials with tailored functions. We explore in simulation the…
Many active particles, both of biological and synthetic origin, can have a light controllable propulsion speed, a property that in biology is commonly referred to as photokinesis. Here we investigate directed transport of photokinetic…
The results of applying a laser dynamic speckle technique to characterize bacterial activity are presented. The speckle activity was detected in two-compartment Petri dishes. One compartment was inoculated and the other one was left as a…
Active matter systems being in a non-equilibrium state, exhibit complex behaviors such as self-organization and giving rise to emergent phenomena. There are many examples of active particles with biological origins, including bacteria and…
Shortcut engineering consists of a class of approaches to rapidly manipulate physical systems by means of specially designed external controls. In this Letter, we apply these approaches to run-and-tumble particles, which are designed to…
Drying of bacterial suspensions is frequently encountered in a plethora of natural and engineering processes. However, the evaporation-driven mechanical instabilities of dense consolidating bacterial suspensions have not been explored…
Living systems are capable of locomotion, reconfiguration, and replication. To perform these tasks, cells spatiotemporally coordinate the interactions of force-generating, "active" molecules that create and manipulate non-equilibrium…
Escherichia coli and other bacteria use rotating helical filaments to swim. Each cell typically has about four filaments, which bundle or disperse depending on the sense of motor rotation. To study the bundling process, we built a…
The dynamics of swimming bacteria depend on the properties of their habitat media. Recently it was shown that the motion of swimming bacteria dispersed directly in a non-toxic water-based lyotropic chromonic liquid crystal can be controlled…
The twisting and writhing of a cell body and associated mechanical stresses is an underappreciated constraint on microbial self-propulsion. Multi-flagellated bacteria can even buckle and writhe under their own activity as they swim through…
Living cells dynamically modulate the local morphologies of their actin cytoskeletons to perform biological functions, including force transduction, intracellular transport, and cell division. A major challenge is to understand how diverse…
Escherichia coli has long been used as a model organism due to the extensive experimental characterization of its pathways and molecular components. Take chemotaxis as an example, which allows bacteria to sense and swim in response to…
Motility is a fundamental survival strategy of bacteria to navigate porous environments. Swimming cells thrive in quiescent wetlands and sediments at the bottom of the marine water column, where they mediate many essential biogeochemical…
The swimming properties of an E. coli-type model bacterium are investigated by mesoscale hy- drodynamic simulations, combining molecular dynamics simulations of the bacterium with the multiparticle particle collision dynamics method for the…
Solution self-assembly of amphiphilic block copolymers (BCs) is typically performed by a solvent-to-water exchange. However, BC assemblies are often trapped in metastable states depending on the mixing conditions such as the magnitude and…