Related papers: Microbial range expansions on liquid substrates
A hallmark of bacterial populations cultured in vitro is their homogeneity of growth, where the majority of cells display identical growth rate, cell size and content. Recent insights, however, have revealed that even cells growing in…
Understanding the growth of the cores of giant planets is a difficult problem. Recently, Lambrechts and Johansen (2012; LJ12) proposed a new model in which the cores grow by the accretion of pebble-size objects, as the latter drift towards…
Surface growth, by association or dissociation of material on the boundaries of a body, is ubiquitous in both natural and engineering systems. It is the fundamental mechanism by which biological materials grow, starting from the level of a…
Complex mixing and magnetic field generation occurs within stellar interiors particularly where there is a strong shear flow. To obtain a comprehensive understanding of these processes, it is necessary to study the complex dynamics of shear…
The evolutionary transition to multicellularity transformed life on earth, allowing for the evolution of large, complex organisms. While multicellularity can be strongly advantageous, its earliest stages bring unique physical challenges.…
Predicting rapid and slower soil evolution remains a scientific challenge. This process involves poorly understood aspects of disordered granular matter and dense suspension dynamics. This study presents a novel two-dimensional experiment…
The diffusion of particles in complex media has gained significant interest due to its dual relevance: probing the viscoelastic properties of materials via microrheology and assessing the extent of particle displacement over time. In this…
The growth, form, and division of prebiotic vesicles, membraneous bags of fluid of varying components and shapes is hypothesized to have served as the substrate for the origin of life. The dynamics of these out-of-equilibrium structures is…
Spatial constraints such as rigid barriers affect the dynamics of cell populations, potentially altering the course of natural evolution. In this paper, we investigate the population genetics of Escherichia coli proliferating in…
We study pressure-driven propagation of gas into a micron-scale gap between two linearly elastic substrates. Applying the lubrication approximation, the flow-field is governed by the interaction between elasticity and viscosity, as well as…
Advances in synthetic biology allow us to engineer bacterial collectives with pre-specified characteristics. However, the behavior of these collectives is difficult to understand, as cellular growth and division as well as extra-cellular…
We prove results on existence and uniqueness of solutions of a system of equations modeling the evolution of a generalized bioconvective flow. The mathematical model considered in the present work describes the convective motion generated…
Conjugation is the primary mechanism of horizontal gene transfer that spreads antibiotic resistance among bacteria. Although conjugation normally occurs in surface-associated growth (e.g., biofilms), it has been traditionally studied in…
The transition from localized to systemic spreading of bacteria, viruses and other agents is a fundamental problem that spans medicine, ecology, biology and agriculture science. We have conducted experiments and simulations in a simple…
Experimental and theoretical studies on wind-wave generation have focused primarily on the air-water interface, where viscous effects are small. Here we characterize the influence of the liquid viscosity on the growth of mechanically…
Nutrient limitation is one of the most common triggers of antibiotic tolerance and persistence. Here, we present two microfluidic setups to study how spatial and temporal variation in nutrient availability lead to increased survival of…
A great number of biological organisms live in aqueous environments. Major evolutionary transitions, including the emergence of life itself, likely occurred in such environments. While the chemical aspects of the role of water in biology…
The effect of substrate topography on the settlement of coral larvae in wave-driven oscillatory flow is investigated using computational fluid dynamics coupled to a 2D agent-based simulation of individual larvae. Substrate topography…
The thermodynamic structure of protoplanetary discs is determined by dust opacities, which depend on the size of the dust grains and their chemical composition. In the inner regions, the grain sizes are regulated by the level of turbulence…
The spatio-temporal dynamics of a population present one of the most fascinating aspects and challenges for ecological modelling. In this article we review some simple mathematical models, based on one dimensional…