Related papers: Slowdown of the surface diffusion during early sta…
Confining glassy polymer into films can substantially modify their local and film-averaged properties. We present a lattice model of film geometry with void-mediated facilitation behaviors but free from any elasticity effect. We analyze the…
It has been argued that there is biological and modeling evidence that a non-linear diffusion coefficient of the type D(b) = D_0 b^{k} underlies the formation of a number of growth patterns of bacterial colonies. We study a…
Long DNA molecules can be mapped by cutting them with restriction enzymes inside a narrow channel. Once cut, the individual fragments thus produced move away from each other due to diffusion and entropic effects. We investigate how long it…
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,…
Investigation of dynamic processes in cell biology very often relies on the observation in two dimensions of 3D biological processes. Consequently, the data are partial and statistical methods and models are required to recover the…
Biofilms, bacteria cells surrounded by a self-produced polymeric matrix, are common on medical devices and lead to many hospital infections. The biofilm lifecycle includes disassembly and dispersion, where bacteria clusters detach from the…
In many biological and small scale technological applications particles may transiently bind to a cylindrical surface. In between two binding events the particles diffuse in the bulk, thus producing an effective translation on the cylinder…
We present an exact calculation of the mean first-passage time to a small target on the surface of a 2D or 3D spherical domain, for a molecule performing surface-mediated diffusion. This minimal model of interfacial reactions, which…
An analytical soluble model based on a Continuous Time Random Walk (CTRW) scheme for the adsorption-desorption processes at interfaces, called bulk-mediated surface diffusion, is presented. The time evolution of the effective probability…
Motivated by recent experimental studies probing i) the existence of a mobile layer at the free surface of glasses, and ii) the capillary leveling of polymer nanofilms, we study the evolution of square-wave patterns at the free surface of a…
Bacteria in aquatic environments often interact with particulate matter. A key example is bacterial degradation of marine snow responsible for carbon export from the upper ocean in the biological pump. The ecological interaction between…
The hydrodynamic effects of macromolecular crowding inside cells is often studied in vitro by using polymers as crowding reagents. Confinement of polymers inside cell-sized droplets has been shown to affect the diffusion of small molecules.…
We study active surface wetting using a minimal model of bacteria that takes into account the intrinsic motility diversity of living matter. A mixture of "fast" and "slow" self-propelled Brownian particles is considered in the presence of a…
In living cells, proteins combine 3D bulk diffusion and 1D sliding along the DNA to reach a target faster. This process is known as facilitated diffusion, and we investigate its dynamics in the physiologically relevant case of confined DNA.…
We experimentally investigate the effect of particle size on the motion of passive polystyrene spheres in suspensions of Escherichia coli. Using particles covering a range of sizes from 0.6 to 39 microns, we probe particle dynamics at both…
Bacterial conglomerates such as biofilms and microcolonies are ubiquitous in nature and play an important role in industry and medicine. In contrast to well-mixed, diluted cultures routinely used in microbial research, bacteria in a…
We discuss the emergence and growth of the cooperativity accompanying vitrification based on the density fluctuation dynamics for fragile glass-forming liquids. (i) The relaxation of density fluctuations proceeds by the particle (density)…
Run-and-tumble is a common but vital strategy that bacteria employ to explore environment suffused with boundaries, as well as to escape from entrapment. In this study we reveal how this strategy and the resulting dynamical behavior can be…
Most of our understanding of bacterial chemotaxis comes from studies of Escherichia coli. However, recent evidence suggests significant departures from the E. coli paradigm in other bacterial species. This variation may stem from different…
Slow dynamics in a fluid are studied in one of the most basic systems possible: polydisperse hard spheres. Monodisperse hard spheres cannot be studied as the slow down in dynamics as the density is increased is preempted by crystallisation.…