Related papers: Nutrient transport driven by microbial active carp…
The diffusion of active microscopic organisms in complex environments plays an important role in a wide range of biological phenomena from cell colony growth to single organism transport. Here, we investigate theoretically and…
The spontaneous emergence of collective flows is a generic property of active fluids and often leads to chaotic flow patterns characterised by swirls, jets, and topological disclinations in their orientation field. However, the ability to…
Ratchet effects can arise for single or collectively interacting Brownian particles on an asymmetric substrate when a net dc transport is produced by an externally applied ac driving force or by periodically flashing the substrate.…
External control of the swimming speed of `active particles' can be used to self assemble designer structures in situ on the micrometer to millimeter scale. We demonstrate such reconfigurable templated active self assembly in a fluid…
Swimming microbes, such as bacteria and algae, live in diverse habitats including soil, ocean and human body which are characterized by structural boundaries and heterogeneous fluid flows. Although much progress has been made in…
Bacteria commonly inhabit porous environments such as host tissues, soil, and marine sediments, where complex geometries constrain and redirect their motion. Although bacterial motility has been studied in porous media, the roles of cell…
Fluid-structure interactions between active and passive components are important for many biological systems to function. A particular example is chromatin in the cell nucleus, where ATP-powered processes drive coherent motions of the…
Transport of ions and small molecules across the cell membrane against electrochemical gradients is catalyzed by integral membrane proteins that use a source of free energy to drive the energetically uphill flux of the transported…
Intracellular pathogens such as Listeria monocytogenes and Rickettsia rickettsii move within a host cell by polymerizing a comet-tail of actin fibers that ultimately pushes the cell forward. This dense network of cross-linked actin polymers…
Living materials such as biological tissues or bacterial colonies are collections of heterogeneous entities of different sizes, capable of autonomous motion, and often capable of cooperating. Such a degree of complexity brings to collective…
The macroscopic phenomenon of filtration is the separation between suspended and liquid phases and it takes place in natural environments (e.g. groundwater, soil, hyporheic zone) and industrial systems (e.g. filtration plants,…
Quantum transport is strongly influenced by interference with phase relations that depend sensitively on the scattering medium. Since even small changes in the geometry of the medium can turn constructive interference to destructive, a…
Micro-swimmers can serve as cargo carriers that move deep inside complex flow networks. When a school collectively entrains the surrounding fluid, their transport capacity can be enhanced. This effect is quantified with good agreement…
We present a theory for self-driven fluids, such as motorized cytoskeletal extracts or bacterial suspensions, that takes into account the underlying periodic duty cycle carried by the active particles of which the system is composed. We…
A model describing the competition of two species for a common nutrient is studied. It is assumed that one of the competitors is motionless while the other has the ability to move upwards gradients of the nutrient density. It is proved that…
We scrutinize the temporally-resolved speed of active cargo transport in living cells, and show intermittent bursting motions. These nonlinear fluctuations follow a scaling law over several decades of time and space, the statistical…
Microbes thrive in diverse porous environments -- from soil and riverbeds to human lungs and cancer tissues -- spanning multiple scales and conditions. Short- to long-term fluctuations in local factors induce spatio-temporal…
Following the goal of using active particles as targeted cargo carriers aimed, for example, to deliver drugs towards cancer cells, the quest for the control of individual active particles with external fields is among the most explored…
Inspired by recent experimental observation of patterning at the membrane of a living cell, we propose a generic model for the dynamics of a fluctuating interface driven by particle-like inclusions which stimulate its growth. We find that…
Microorganisms are able to overcome the thermal randomness of their surroundings by harvesting energy to navigate in viscous fluid environments. In a similar manner, synthetic colloidal microswimmers are capable of mimicking complex…