Related papers: Invariance properties of bacterial random walks in…
We study the properties of random walks on complex trees. We observe that the absence of loops reflects in physical observables showing large differences with respect to their looped counterparts. First, both the vertex discovery rate and…
Motile biological cells in tissue often display the phenomenon of durotaxis, i.e. they tend to move towards stiffer parts of substrate tissue. The mechanism for this behavior is not completely understood. We consider simplified models for…
Routing choices of walking pedestrians in geometrically complex environments are regulated by the interplay of a multitude of factors such as local crowding, (estimated) time to destination, (perceived) comfort. As individual choices…
Spatial patterns arising spontaneously due to internal processes are ubiquitous in nature, varying from regular patterns of dryland vegetation to complex structures of bacterial colonies. Many of these patterns can be explained in the…
Suspensions of motile cells are model systems for understanding the unique mechanical properties of living materials which often consist of ensembles of self-propelled particles. We present here a quantitative comparison of theory against…
We analyse a collection of empirical networks in a wide spectrum of disciplines and show that strong non-normality is ubiquitous in network science. Dynamical processes evolving on non-normal networks exhibit a peculiar behaviour, as…
Living cells maintain size homeostasis by actively compensating for size fluctuations. Here, we present two stochastic maps that unify phenomenological models by integrating fluctuating single-cell growth rates and size-dependent noise…
We review recent results obtained from simple individual-based models of biological competition in which birth and death rates of an organism depend on the presence of other competing organisms close to it. In addition the individuals…
Bacteria frequently colonize natural microcavities such as gut crypts, plant apoplasts, and soil pores. Recent studies have shown that the physical structure of these spaces plays a crucial role in shaping the stability and resilience of…
Behavioural differences may arise in the absence of genetic or environmental variation. Chaotic dynamics may influence behavioural development, and so this among-individual variation. We discuss methods and experimental designs to test this…
We consider a random walker in a dynamic random environment given by a system of independent simple symmetric random walks. We obtain ballisticity results under two types of perturbations: low particle density, and strong local drift on…
Recent experiments (G. Ariel, et al., Nature Comm. 6, 8396 (2015)) revealed an intriguing behavior of swarming bacteria: they fundamentally change their collective motion from simple diffusion into a superdiffusive L\'{e}vy walk dynamics.…
The existence of travelling waves for a model of concentration waves of bacteria is investigated. The model consists in a kinetic equation for the biased motion of cells following a run-and-tumble process, coupled with two…
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,…
It has recently been reported that bacteria, such as E.coli and P. putida, perform distinct modes of motion when placed in porous media as compared to dilute regions or free space. This has led us to suggest an efficient strategy for active…
A random walk scheme, consisting of alternating phases of regular Brownian motion and L\'evy walks, is proposed as a model for run-and-tumble bacterial motion. Within the continuous-time random walk approach we obtain the long-time and…
The transport of active particles may occur in complex environments, in which it emerges from the interplay between the mobility of the active components and the quenched disorder of the environment. Here we explore structural and dynamical…
Background: This study is mainly motivated by the need of understanding how the diffusion behaviour of a biomolecule (or even of a larger object) is affected by other moving macromolecules, organelles, and so on, inside a living cell,…
Many motile microorganisms react to environmental light cues with a variety of motility responses guiding cells towards better conditions for survival and growth. The use of spatial light modulators could help to elucidate the mechanisms of…
Meso-scale turbulence was originally observed experimentally in various suspensions of swimming bacteria, as well as in the collective motion of active colloids. The corresponding large-scale dynamical patterns were reproduced in a simple…