Related papers: Motile bacteria in a critical fluid mixture
The near-surface swimming patterns of bacteria are strongly determined by the hydrodynamic interactions between bacteria and the surface, which trap bacteria in smooth circular trajectories that lead to inefficient surface exploration.…
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…
Bacteria can adjust their swimming behaviour in response to chemical variations, a phenomenon known as chemotaxis. This process is characterised by a drift velocity that depends non-linearly on the concentration of chemical species and its…
Bacteria in bulk fluids swim collectively and display fascinating emergent dynamics. Although bacterial collective swimming in three-dimensional (3D) geometries has been well studied, its counterpart in confined two-dimensional (2D)…
Diverse processes--e.g. bioremediation, biofertilization, and microbial drug delivery--rely on bacterial migration in disordered, three-dimensional (3D) porous media. However, how pore-scale confinement alters bacterial motility is unknown…
Peritrichous bacteria such as Escherichia coli swim in viscous fluids by forming a helical bundle of flagellar filaments. The filaments are spatially distributed around the cell body to which they are connected via a flexible hook. To…
We use moving light patterns to control the motion of {\it Escherichia coli} bacteria whose motility is photo-activated. Varying the pattern speed controls the magnitude and direction of the bacterial flux, and therefore the accumulation of…
Active systems comprised of self-propelled units show fascinating transitions from Brownian-like dynamics to collective coherent motion. Swirling of swimming bacteria is a spectacular example. This study demonstrates that a nematic liquid…
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…
Understanding flow and transport of bacteria in porous media is crucial to technologies such as bioremediation, biomineralization or enhanced oil recovery. While physicochemical bacteria filtration is well-documented, recent studies showed…
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…
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…
Motile bacteria can migrate along chemical gradients in a process known as chemotaxis. When exposed to uniform environmental stress, Escherichia coli cells coordinate their chemotactic responses to form millimeter-sized condensates…
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…
In natural environments, solid surfaces present both opportunities and challenges for bacteria. On one hand, they serve as platforms for biofilm formation, crucial for bacterial colonization and resilience in harsh conditions. On the other…
Motile bacteria are known to accumulate at surfaces, eventually leading to changes in bacterial motility and bio-film formation. We use a novel two-colour, three-dimensional Lagrangian tracking technique, to follow simultaneously the body…
We investigate the effects of bacterial activity on the mixing and transport properties of a passive scalar in time-periodic flows in experiments and in a simple model. We focus on the interactions between swimming E. coli and the…
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…
Self-sustained turbulent structures have been observed in a wide range of living fluids, yet no quantitative theory exists to explain their properties. We report experiments on active turbulence in highly concentrated 3D suspensions of…
Centrifugation is a widespread laboratory technique used to separate mixtures into fractions characterized by a specific size, weight or density. We demonstrate that centrifugation can be also used to separate swimming cells having…