Related papers: Mechanisms for bacterial gliding motility on soft …

Filamentous cyanobacteria, forming long strands of connected cells, are one of the earliest and most successful forms of life on Earth. They exhibit self-organised behaviour, forming large-scale patterns in structures like biomats and…

The sliding of three-dimensional clusters and two-dimensional islands adsorbed on crystal surfaces represent an important test case to understand friction. Even for the same material, monoatomic islands and thick clusters will not as a rule…

We study a two-dimensional model for interacting colloidal particles which displays spontaneous clustering. Within this model we investigate the competition between the pinning to a periodic corrugation potential, and a sideways constant…

The motility of eukaryotic cells is strongly influenced by their environment, with confined cells often developing qualitatively different motility patterns from those migrating on simple two-dimensional substrates. Recent experiments,…

Biological locomotion in nature is often achieved by the interaction between a flexible body and its surrounding medium. The interaction of a flexible body with granular media is less understood compared with viscous fluids partially due to…

In order to examine the influence of system dynamics on sliding friction, we introduce the so-called micro-walking machine. This model consists of a rigid body with a number of elastic contact spots that is pulled by a constantly moving…

Previously published experimental work by other authors has shown that certain motile marine bacteria are able to track free swimming algae by executing a zigzag path and steering toward the algae at each turn. Here, we propose that the…

We present the results of an experimental investigation into buoyant rigid spheres rising through highly concentrated collections of hydrated hydrogel particles. The volume fraction of particles is such that the mechanical properties of the…

We present a model for the motion of hard spherical particles on a two dimensional surface. The model includes both the interaction between the particles via collisions, as well as the interaction of the particles with the substrate. We…

We study the motion of elastic networks driven over a random substrate. Our model which includes local friction forces leads to complex dynamical behavior. We find a transition to a sliding state which belongs to a new universality class.…

We study the dynamics and interaction of two swimming bacteria, modeled by self-propelled dumbbell-type structures. We focus on alignment dynamics of a coplanar pair of elongated swimmers, which propel themselves either by pushing" or…

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…

Bubble-propelled catalytic colloids stand out as a uniquely efficient design for artificial controllable micromachines, but so far lack a general theoretical framework that explains the physics of their propulsion. Here we develop a…

Trajectories and conformations of uni- and multiflagellar bacteria are studied with a coarse-grained model of a cell comprised of elastic flagella connected to a cell body. The elasticities of both the hook protein (connecting cell body and…

Recent findings suggest that shell protein distribution and morphology of bacterial microcompartments regulate the chemical fluxes facilitating reactions which dictate their biological function. We explore how the morphology and component…

The mechanosensitivity of cells, which determines how they are able to respond to mechanical signals received from their environment, is crucial for the functioning of all biological systems. In experiments, cells placed on cyclically…

Lubricated sliding contact between soft solids is an interesting topic in biomechanics and for the design of small-scale engineering devices. As a model of this mechanical set-up, two elastic nonlinear solids are considered jointed through…

We discuss the stick-slip motion of an elastic block sliding along a rigid substrate. We argue that for a given external shear stress this system shows a discontinuous nonequilibrium transition from a uniform stick state to uniform sliding…

In many situations bacteria move in complex environments, as for example in soils, oceans or the human gut-track microbiome. In these natural environments, carrier fluids such as mucus or reproductive fluids show complex structure…

We present a mathematical model of lophotrichous bacteria, motivated by Pseudomonas putida, which swim through fluid by rotating a cluster of multiple flagella extended from near one pole of the cell body. Although the flagella rotate…