Related papers: Motile bacteria in a critical fluid mixture
Bacteria living on surfaces use different types of motility mechanisms to move on the surface in search of food or to form micro-colonies. Twitching is one such form of motility employed by bacteria such as N. gonorrhoeae, in which the…
It has recently been reported that bacteria, such as E.coli and P. putida, perform distinct modes of motion when placed in porous media as compared to dilute regions or free space. This has led us to suggest an efficient strategy for active…
At sufficiently high concentrations, motile bacteria suspended in fluids exhibit a range of ordered and disordered collective motions. Here we explore the combined effects of confinement, periodicity and curvature induced by the active…
E. coli bacteria swim following a run and tumble pattern. In the run state all flagella join in a single helical bundle that propels the cell body along approximately straight paths. When one or more flagellar motors reverse direction the…
Numerous studies have explored the link between bacterial swimming and the number of flagella, a distinguishing feature of motile multiflagellated bacteria. We revisit this open question using augmented slender-body theory simulations, in…
Motile bacteria play essential roles in biology that rely on their dynamic behaviors, including their ability to navigate, interact, and self-organize. However, bacteria dynamics on fluid interfaces are not well understood. Swimmers…
The swimming behavior of bacteria and other microorganisms is sensitive to the physical properties of the fluid in which they swim. Mucus, biofilms, and artificial liquid-crystalline solutions are all examples of fluids with some degree of…
Motility is fundamental to the survival and proliferation of microorganisms. The E. coli bacterium propels itself using a bundle of rotating helical flagella. If one flagellum reverses its rotational direction, it leaves the bundle,…
The hydrodynamic flow field generated by self-propelled active particles and swimming microorganisms is strongly altered by the presence of nearby boundaries in a viscous flow. Using a simple model three-linked sphere swimmer, we show that…
The hydrodynamic interactions among bacterial cell bodies, flagella, and surrounding boundaries are essential for understanding bacterial motility in complex environments. In this study, we demonstrate that each slender flagellum can be…
We report the selective stabilization of chiral rotational direction of bacterial vortices, from turbulent bacterial suspension, in achiral circular microwells sealed by an oil-water interface. This broken-symmetry, originating from the…
We use a continuum, two-fluid approach to study a mixture of two active nematic fluids. Even in the absence of thermodynamically-driven ordering, for mixtures of different activities we observe turbulent microphase separation, where domains…
Bacterial suspensions--a premier example of active fluids--show an unusual response to shear stresses. Instead of increasing the viscosity of the suspending fluid, the emergent collective motions of swimming bacteria can turn a suspension…
Dense bacterial suspensions display collective motion exhibiting coherent flow structures reminiscent of turbulent flows. In contrast to inertial turbulence, understanding the microscopic dynamics of bacterial fluid elements undergoing…
Randomly moving active particles can be herded into directed motion by asymmetric geometric structures. Although such a rectification process has been extensively studied due to its fundamental, biological, and technological relevance, a…
A flagellated bacterium navigates fluid environments by rotating its helical flagellar bundle. The wobbling of the bacterial body significantly influences its swimming behavior. To quantify the three underlying motions--precession,…
Motivated by recent experiments of motile bacteria crossing liquid-liquid interfaces of isotropic- nematic coexistence (Cheon et al., Soft Matter 20: 7313-7320, 2024), we study the dynamics of prolate microswimmers traversing clean…
Active matter exhibits remarkable collective behavior in which flows, continuously generated by active particles, are intertwined with the orientational order of these particles. The relationship remains poorly understood as the activity…
Optical tweezers are a versatile tool that can be used to manipulate small particles including both motile and non-motile bacteria and cells. The orientation of a non-spherical particle within a beam depends on the shape of the particle and…
This fluid dynamics video presents three-dimensional kinetic simulations of the dynamics in suspensions of oxytactic bacteria confined in thin liquid film surrounded by air. At the initial time, the bacterial concentration is uniform and…