Related papers: Swimming of peritrichous bacteria is enabled by an…
Bacteria commonly live in structured communities that affect human health and influence ecological systems. Heterogeneous populations, such as motile and non-motile populations, often coexist in bacteria communities. Motile subpopulations…
The natural habitats of microorganisms in the human microbiome and ocean and soil ecosystems are full of colloids and macromolecules, which impart non-Newtonian flow properties drastically affecting the locomotion of swimming…
Bacteriophage viruses, one of the most abundant entities in our planet, lack the ability to move independently. Instead, they crowd fluid environments in anticipation of a random encounter with a bacterium. Once they land on the cell body…
Peritrichous bacteria synchronize and bundle their flagella to actively swim while disruption of the bundle leads to tumbling. It is still not known whether the number of flagella represents an evolutionary adaptation towards optimizing…
Recent experiments proposed to use confined bacteria in order to generate flows near surfaces. We develop a mathematical and a computational model of this fluid transport using a linear superposition of fundamental flow singularities. The…
Eukaryotic swimming cells such as spermatozoa, algae or protozoa use flagella or cilia to move in viscous fluids. The motion of their flexible appendages in the surrounding fluid induces propulsive forces that balance with the viscous drag…
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…
Bacterial motility, and in particular repulsion or attraction towards specific chemicals, has been a subject of investigation for over 100 years, resulting in detailed understanding of bacterial chemotaxis and the corresponding sensory…
Many species of bacteria swim through viscous environments by rotating multiple helical flagella. The filaments gather behind the cell body and form a close helical bundle, which propels the cell forward during a "run". The filaments inside…
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…
The rotary motor of bacteria is a natural nano-technological marvel that enables cell locomotion by powering the rotation of semi-rigid helical flagellar filaments in fluid environments. It is well known that the motor operates essentially…
Oscillations of flagella and cilia play an important role in biology, which motivates the idea of functional mimicry as part of bio-inspired applications. Nevertheless, it still remains challenging to drive their artificial counterparts to…
Many swimming microorganisms, such as bacteria and sperm, use flexible flagella to move through viscoelastic media in their natural environments. In this paper we address the effects a viscoelastic fluid has on the motion and beating…
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…
The course of a peritrichous bacterium such as E. coli crucially depends on the level of synchronization and self-organization of several rotating flagella. However, the rotation of each flagellum generates counter body movements which in…
How motile bacteria move near a surface is a problem of fundamental biophysical interest and is key to the emergence of several phenomena of biological, ecological and medical relevance, including biofilm formation. Solid boundaries can…
We study catalytic Janus swimmers and Escherichia coli bacteria swimming in a two-dimensional colloidal crystal. The Janus swimmers orbit individual colloids and hop between colloids stochastically, with a hopping rate that varies inversely…
Many swimming bacteria are propelled by flagellar motors that stochastically switch between the clockwise and counterclockwise rotation direction. While the switching dynamics are one of the most important characteristics of flagellar…
Many microorganisms and artificial microswimmers use helical appendages in order to generate locomotion. Though often rotated so as to produce thrust, some species of bacteria such Spiroplasma, Rhodobacter sphaeroides and Spirochetes induce…
We confine a dense suspension of motile \textit{Escherichia coli} inside a spherical droplet in a water-in-oil emulsion, creating a "bacterially" propelled droplet. We show that droplets move in a persistent random walk, with a persistence…