Related papers: Mechanisms for bacterial gliding motility on soft …
Near a solid boundary, E. coli swims in clockwise circular motion. We provide a hydrodynamic model for this behavior. We show that circular trajectories are natural consequences of force-free and torque-free swimming, and the hydrodynamic…
During the past century, biologists and mathematicians investigated two mechanisms underlying bacteria motion: the run phase during which bacteria move in straight lines and the tumble phase in which they change their orientation. When…
The motion of a pair of micro-wedges ("carriers") in a turbulent bacterial bath is explored using computer simulations with explicit modeling of the bacteria and experiments. The orientation of the two micro-wedges is parallel and fixed by…
The persistent dynamics of active particles makes them explore extended portions of an obstacle's boundary during collisions. From impact to escape, the net applied forces depend on the curvature of the wall and increase in the presence of…
Lubrication flows between two solid surfaces can be found in a variety of biological and engineering settings. In many of these systems, the lubricant exhibits viscoelastic properties, which modify the associated lubrication forces. Here,…
Biological cells are able to adapt their behaviour in response to environmental cues. Durotaxis is a phenomenon in which cells adjust their migration depending on the mechanical properties of a surrounding substrate. Although durotaxis has…
Drying of bacterial suspensions is frequently encountered in a plethora of natural and engineering processes. However, the evaporation-driven mechanical instabilities of dense consolidating bacterial suspensions have not been explored…
The motion of submerged magnetic microspheres rolling at a glass-water interface has been studied using magnetic rotation and optical tweezers combined with bright-field microscopy particle tracking techniques. Individual microspheres of…
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…
Different hypotheses have been proposed to explain the mechanism for the extremely low friction coefficient of carbon coatings and its undesired dependence on air humidity. A decisive atomistic insight is still lacking because of the…
The self-organization of microbial ecosystems involves a large variety of mechanisms, ranging from biochemical signaling to population dynamics. Among these, the role of motility regulation has been little studied, despite the importance of…
We consider some basic principles of fluid-induced lubrication at soft interfaces. In particular, we show how the presence of a soft substrate leads to an increase in the physical separation between surfaces sliding past each other. By…
To swim through a viscous fluid, a flagellated bacterium must overcome the fluid drag on its body by rotating a flagellum or a bundle of multiple flagella. Because the drag increases with the size of bacteria, it is expected theoretically…
Dynamics of a bubble impacting and sliding a tilted surface has been investigated through experimental and computational methods. \textcolor{blue}{Specifically, shear stress generated on the wall has been calculated and compared with…
Fluid droplets can be induced to move over rigid or flexible surfaces under external or body forces. We describe the effect of variations in material properties of a flexible substrate as a mechanism for motion. In this paper, we consider a…
Many types of bacteria swim by rotating a bundle of helical filaments also called flagella. Each filament is driven by a rotary motor and a very flexible hook transmits the motor torque to the filament. We model it by discretizing…
Hypothesis: Bacterial contamination of surfaces poses a major threat to public health. Designing effective antibacterial or self-cleaning surfaces requires understanding how bacteria-laden droplets interact with solid substrates and how…
Flexible filaments moving in viscous fluids are ubiquitous in the natural microscopic world. For example, the swimming of bacteria and spermatozoa as well as important physiological functions at organ-level, such as the cilia-induced motion…
Motivated by the motion of nematode sperm cells, we present a model for the motion of an adhesive gel on a solid substrate. The gel polymerizes at the leading edge and depolymerizes at the rear. The motion results from a competition between…
The crawling motion of Dictyostelium discoideum on substrata involves a number of coordinated events including cell contractions and cell protrusions. The mechanical forces exerted on the substratum during these contractions have recently…