Related papers: Motile bacteria in a critical fluid mixture

Active matter comprised of self-propelled interacting units holds a major promise for extraction of useful work from its seemingly chaotic out-of-equilibrium dynamics. Streamlining active matter to produce work is especially important at…

Microscopic swimmers, e.g., chemotactic bacteria and cells, are capable of directed motion by exerting a force on their environment. For asymmetric microswimmers, e.g., bacteria, spermatozoa and many artificial active colloidal particles, a…

Many bacteria rely on active cell appendages, such as type IV pili, to move over substrates and interact with neighboring cells. Here, we study the motion of individual cells and bacterial colonies, mediated by the collective interactions…

Various bacterial strains (e.g. strains belonging to the genera Bacillus, Paenibacillus, Serratia and Salmonella) exhibit colonial branching patterns during growth on poor semi-solid substrates. These patterns reflect the bacterial…

Whirling and swerving, a bacterium is swimming in a test tube, foraging for food. On the surface of a vibrating bath, a droplet starts walking. A certain similarity, but mostly dissimilarity, between the physical memory that emerges in…

There is increasing evidence that mammalian cells not only crawl on substrates but can also swim in fluids. To elucidate the mechanisms of the onset of motility of cells in suspension, a model which couples actin and myosin kinetics to…

The bacterium Escherichia coli (E. coli) moves in its natural environment in a series of straight runs, interrupted by tumbles which cause change of direction. It performs chemotaxis towards chemo-attractants by extending the duration of…

Navigation of microorganisms is controlled by internal processes ultimately sensitive to mechanical or chemical signaling encountered along the path. In many natural environments, such as porous soils or physiological ducts, motile species…

A multicomponent multiphase reactive transport simulator has been developed to facilitate the investigation of a large variety of phenomena in porous media including component transport, diffusion, microbiological growth and decay, cell…

We use in vivo measurements of swimming bacteria in an optical trap to determine fundamental properties of bacterial propulsion. In particular, we determine the propulsion matrix, which relates the angular velocity of the flagellum to the…

Boiling is a prevalent phase-change process that plays a vital role in facilitating efficient heat transfer from a heating surface. While this heat transfer mechanism is generally effective, a rapid increase in surface temperature can lead…

Phase separation driven by nonequilibrium fluctuations is a hallmark of both living and synthetic active matter. Unlike equilibrium systems, where ordered states arise from the minimization of free energy, active systems are fueled by a…

Interactions between swimming cells and surfaces are essential to many microbiological processes, from bacterial biofilm formation to human fertilization. However, in spite of their fundamental importance, relatively little is known about…

We model an enclosed system of bacteria, whose motility-induced phase separation is coupled to slow population dynamics. Without noise, the system shows both static phase separation and a limit cycle, in which a rising global population…

Active fluid droplets are a class of soft materials exhibiting autonomous motion sustained by an energy supply. Such systems have been shown to capture motility regimes typical of biological cells and are ideal candidates as building-block…

In this fluid dynamics video we explore the nature and causes of the spontaneous ordering that emerges in a dense bacterial suspension under confinement. Recent experiments with B. Subtilis confined within small flattened drops show that…

Here we characterize the motility of athermal swimming droplets within the framework of active rotational diffusion. Just like active colloids, their trajectories can be modeled with a constant velocity $V$ and a slow angular diffusion, but…

The large-scale collective behavior of biological systems can be characterized by macroscopic transport, which arises from the non-equilibrium microscopic interactions among individual constituents. A prominent example is the formation of…

The hydrodynamic stresses created by active particles can destabilise orientational order present in the system. This is manifested, for example, by the appearance of a bend instability in active nematics or in quasi-2-dimensional living…

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…