Related papers: Magnetotactic bacteria in a droplet self-assemble …
Biased locomotion is a common feature of microorganisms, but little is known about its impact on self-organisation. Inspired by recent experiments showing a transition to large-scale flows, we study theoretically the dynamics of…
Magnetotactic bacteria moving on circular orbits form hydrodynamically bound states. When close to a surface and with the tilting of the field in a direction close to the perpendicular to this surface these swarms move perpendicularly to…
Magnetotaxis is a well known phenomenon in swimming microorganisms which sense magnetic fields e.g. by incorporating crystalline magnetosomes. In designing artificial active matter with tunable dynamics, external magnetic fields can provide…
Active forces occurring within cells can drive crucial biological processes that involve spontaneous organization and shape change, such as cell division. Motivated by recent in vitro experiments of nematic droplets of cytoskeletal…
Bacteria commonly live in structured communities that affect human health and influence ecological systems. Heterogeneous populations, such as motile and non-motile populations, often coexist in bacteria communities. Motile subpopulations…
Micromanipulation of magnetotactic bacteria with a microelectromagnet matrix was demonstrated. Magnetotactic bacteria synthesize a chain of magnetic nanoparticles inside their body to guide their motion in the geomagnetic field. A…
Active fluids made of powered suspended particles have unique abilities to self-generate flow and density structures. How such dynamics can be triggered and leveraged by external cues is a key question of both biological and applied…
Bacteria can spontaneously develop collective motions by aligning their motions in dense systems. Here, we show that bacteria can also respond collectively to an alternating electrical field and form dynamic clusters oscillating at the same…
Highly concentrated active agents tend to exhibit turbulent flows, reminiscent of classical hydrodynamic turbulence, which has attracted considerable attention lately. Controlling the so-called active turbulence has long been a challenge,…
Active matter is a new class of material, intrinsically out-of equilibrium with intriguing properties. So far, the recent upsurge of studies has mostly focused on the spontaneous behavior of these systems --in the absence of external…
Burgeoning interest in the area of bacteria-powered micro robotic systems prompted us to study the dynamics of cargo transport by single bacteria. In this paper, we have studied the swimming behaviour of oil-droplets attached as a cargo to…
Active matter comprised of self-propelled interacting units holds a major promise for extraction of useful work from its seemingly chaotic out-of-equilibrium dynamics. Streamlining active matter to produce work is especially important at…
Magnetotactic bacteria (MTB) are endowed with an exquisite orientation mechanism allowing them to swim along the geomagnetic field lines. This mechanism consists of a chain of bio-synthesized magnetic nano-crystals that endow MTB with a…
We confine a dense suspension of motile \textit{Escherichia coli} inside a spherical droplet in a water-in-oil emulsion, creating a "bacterially" propelled droplet. We show that droplets move in a persistent random walk, with a persistence…
Concentrated suspensions of swimming microorganisms and other forms of active matter are known to display complex, self-organized spatio-temporal patterns on scales large compared to those of the individual motile units. Despite intensive…
Flow-driven rotary motors drive functional processes in human society such as windmills and water wheels. Although examples of such rotary motors also feature prominently in cell biology, their synthetic construction at the nanoscale has…
Hydrodynamics and confinement dominate bacterial mobility near solid or air-water boundaries, causing flagellated bacteria to move in circular trajectories. This phenomenon results from the counter-rotation between the bacterial body and…
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…
Dense suspensions of swimming bacteria are known to exhibit collective behaviour arising from the interplay of steric and hydrodynamic interactions. Unconfined suspensions exhibit transient, recurring vortices and jets, whereas those…
In this fluid dynamics video we explore the nature and causes of the spontaneous ordering that emerges in a dense bacterial suspension under confinement. Recent experiments with B. Subtilis confined within small flattened drops show that…