Related papers: Drift and behavior of E. coli cells
Unraveling bacterial strategies for spatial exploration is crucial for understanding the complexity in the organization of life. Bacterial motility determines the spatio-temporal structure of microbial communities, controls infection…
Swimming bacteria detect chemical gradients by performing temporal comparisons of recent measurements of chemical concentration. These comparisons are described quantitatively by the chemotactic response function, which we expect to…
Many types of cells are able to accurately sense shallow gradients of chemicals across their diameters, allowing the cells to move towards or away from chemical sources. This chemotactic ability relies on the remarkable capacity of cells to…
Chemotaxis is a ubiquitous biological phenomenon in which cells detect a spatial gradient of chemoattractant, and then move towards the source. Here we present a position-dependent advection-diffusion model that quantitatively describes the…
Sensory systems have evolved to respond to input stimuli of certain statistical properties, and to reliably transmit this information through biochemical pathways. Hence, for an experimentally well-characterized sensory system, one ought to…
We study methylation dynamics of the chemoreceptors as an {\sl E.coli} cell moves around in a spatially varying chemo-attractant environment. We consider attractant concentration with strong and weak spatial gradient. During the uphill and…
Bacteria typically reside in heterogeneous environments with various chemogradients where motile cells can gain an advantage over non-motile cells. Since motility is energetically costly, cells must optimize their swimming speed and…
The run-and-tumble dynamics of bacteria, as exhibited by \textit{E. coli}, offers a simple experimental realization of non-Brownian, yet diffusive, particles. Here we present some analytic and numerical results for models of the ideal…
We demonstrate 'differential dynamic microscopy' (DDM) for the fast, high throughput characterization of the dynamics of active particles. Specifically, we characterize the swimming speed distribution and the fraction of motile cells in…
Controlling bacterial surface adhesion and subsequent biofilm formation in fluid systems is crucial for the safety and efficacy of medical and industrial processes. Here, we theoretically examine the transport of bacteria close to surfaces,…
One striking feature of bacterial motion is their ability to swim upstream along corners and crevices, by leveraging hydrodynamic interactions. This motion through anatomic ducts or medical devices might be at the origin of serious…
Biological tissues have been observed to display emergent fluid-like properties, owing to physical interactions between cells. However, it remains unclear in general how these fluid-like properties affect tissue structure and function.…
The rheological response under simple shear of an active suspension of Escherichia coli is determined in a large range of shear rates and concentrations. The effective viscosity and the time scales characterizing the bacterial organization…
We quantitatively study the transport of E. coli near the walls of confined microfluidic channels, and in more detail along the edges formed by the interception of two perpendicular walls. Our experiments establish the connection between…
Living cells are capable of interacting with their environments in a variety of ways, including cell signalling, adhesion, and directed motion. These behaviours are often mediated by receptor molecules embedded in the cell membrane, which…
Many chemotactic bacteria inhabit environments in which chemicals appear as localized pulses and evolve by processes such as diffusion and mixing. We show that, in such environments, physical limits on the accuracy of temporal gradient…
The chemotactic network of Escherichia coli has been studied extensively both biophysically and information-theoretically. Nevertheless, the connection between these two aspects is still elusive. In this work, we report such a connection by…
Inputs to signaling pathways can have complex statistics that depend on the environment and on the behavioral response to previous stimuli. Such behavioral feedback is particularly important in navigation. Successful navigation relies on…
Sedimentation in active fluids has come into focus due to the ubiquity of swimming micro-organisms in natural and artificial environments. Here, we experimentally investigate sedimentation of passive particles in water containing various…
Bacterial contamination of biological conducts, catheters or water resources is a major threat to public health and can be amplified by the ability of bacteria to swim upstream. The mechanisms of this rheotaxis, the reorientation with…