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Circular milling, a stunning manifestation of collective motion, is found across the natural world, from fish shoals to army ants. It has been observed recently that the plant-animal worm $Symsagittifera~roscoffensis$ exhibits circular…
The acoustofluidic method holds great promise for manipulating microorganisms. When exposed to the steady vortex structures of acoustic streaming flow, these microorganisms exhibit intriguing dynamic behaviors, such as hydrodynamic trapping…
We experimentally studied the locomotion of the nematode C. elegans in both fluidic and granular media. In this fluid dynamics video, we show the motility gaits of the nematode in these two environments. The motility of the nematode C.…
Undulatory locomotion, as seen in the nematode \emph{Caenorhabditis elegans}, is a common swimming gait of organisms in the low Reynolds number regime, where viscous forces are dominant. While the nematode's motility is expected to be a…
Inexpensive, portable lab-on-a-chip devices would revolutionize fields like environmental monitoring and global health, but current microfluidic chips are tethered to extensive off-chip hardware. Insects, however, are self-contained and…
We analyse the neural dynamics and its relation with the emergent behaviour of a robotic vehicle that is controlled by a neural network numerical simulation based on the nervous system of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. The robot…
With exquisite precision and reproducibility, cells orchestrate the cooperative action of thousands of nanometer-sized molecular motors to carry out mechanical tasks at much larger length scales, such as cell motility, division and…
Gastrulation, namely cell internalization, is a significant milestone during the development of metazoans from worm to human, which generates multiple embryonic layers with distinct cell fates and spatial organizations. Although many…
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 physical and bio-mechanical principles that govern undulatory movement on wet surfaces have important applications in physiology, physics, and engineering. The nematode {\it C. elegans}, with its highly stereotypical and functionally…
Self-propelling bacteria are a dream of nano-technology. These unicellular organisms are not just capable of living and reproducing, but they can swim very efficiently, sense the environment and look for food, all packaged in a body…
Cells control fluid flows with a spatial and temporal precision that far exceeds the capabilities of current microfluidic technologies. Cells achieve this superior spatio-temporal control by harnessing dynamic networks of cytoskeleton and…
The aim of this paper is to propose a new numerical model to simulate 2D vesicles interacting with a newtonian fluid. The inextensible membrane is modeled by a chain of circular rigid particles which are maintained in cohesion by using two…
Living organisms rely on molecular networks, such as gene circuits and signaling pathways, for information processing and robust decision-making in crowded, noisy environments. Recent advances show that interacting biomolecules…
Undulatory locomotion of microorganisms like soil-dwelling worms and spermatozoa, in structured environments, is ubiquitous in nature. They navigate complex environments consisting of fluids and obstacles, negotiating hydrodynamic effects…
Microorganisms swimming through viscous fluids imprint their propulsion mechanisms in the flow fields they generate. Extreme confinement of these swimmers between rigid boundaries often arises in natural and technological contexts, yet…
We use molecular dynamics simulations to study the behavior of a compressible Lennard-Jones fluid in simple shear flow in a two-dimensional nanochannel. The system is equilibrated in the fluid phase close to the triple point at which gas,…
Various microorganisms and some mammalian cells are able to swim in viscous fluids by performing nonreciprocal body deformations, such as rotating attached flagella or by distorting their entire body. In order to perform chemotaxis, i.e. to…
Many organisms live in confined fluidic environments such as the thin liquid layers on the skin of host organisms or in partially- saturated soil. We investigate the collective behaviour of nematodes in a thin liquid layer, which was first…
Worm-inspired robots provide an effective locomotion strategy for constrained environments by combining cyclic body deformation with alternating anchoring. For compliant robots, however, the interaction between deformable anchoring…