Related papers: Rectification of Twitching bacteria through narrow…
The persistent dynamics of active particles makes them explore extended portions of an obstacle's boundary during collisions. From impact to escape, the net applied forces depend on the curvature of the wall and increase in the presence of…
The motion of a pair of micro-wedges ("carriers") in a turbulent bacterial bath is explored using computer simulations with explicit modeling of the bacteria and experiments. The orientation of the two micro-wedges is parallel and fixed by…
Swimming microbes, such as bacteria and algae, live in diverse habitats including soil, ocean and human body which are characterized by structural boundaries and heterogeneous fluid flows. Although much progress has been made in…
We numerically study the dynamics of run-and-tumble particles confined in two chambers connected by thin channels. Two dominant dynamical behaviors emerge: (i) an oscillatory pumping state, in which particles periodically fill the two…
We study a minimal model of a crawling eukaryotic cell with a chemical polarity controlled by a reaction-diffusion mechanism describing Rho GTPase dynamics. The size, shape, and speed of the cell emerge from the combination of the chemical…
Microswimmers such as E. Coli bacteria accumulate and exhibit an intriguing dynamics near walls, governed by hydrodynamic and steric interactions. Insight into the underlying mechanisms and predominant interactions demand a detailed…
Micron-sized self-propelled (active) particles can be considered as model systems for characterizing more complex biological organisms like swimming bacteria or motile cells. We produce asymmetric microswimmers by soft lithography and study…
Cell motility in higher organisms (eukaryotes) is crucial to biological functions ranging from wound healing to immune response, and also implicated in diseases such as cancer. For cells crawling on hard surfaces, significant insights into…
There are many examples of driven and active matter systems containing particles that exhibit circular motion with different chiralities, such as swimming bacteria near surfaces or certain types of self-driven colloidal particles. Circular…
We quantitatively study the transport of E. coli near the walls of confined microfluidic channels, and in more detail along the edges formed by the interception of two perpendicular walls. Our experiments establish the connection between…
We show that the recent experimental observation of the rectification of swimming bacteria in a system with an array of asymmetric barriers occurs due to the ballistic component of the bacteria trajectories introduced by the bacterial…
Run-and-tumble motility is widely used by swimming microorganisms including numerous prokaryotic eukaryotic organisms. Here, we experimentally investigate the run-and-tumble dynamics of the bacterium E. coli in polymeric solutions. We find…
Microscopic swimmers, e.g., chemotactic bacteria and cells, are capable of directed motion by exerting a force on their environment. For asymmetric microswimmers, e.g., bacteria, spermatozoa and many artificial active colloidal particles, a…
Flagellated bacteria are hydrodynamically attracted to rigid walls, yet past work shows a 'hovering' state where they swim stably at a finite height above surfaces. We use numerics and theory to reveal the physical origin of hovering.…
In our article we present a computational model for the simulation of self-propelled anisotropic bacteria. To this end we use a self-propelled particle model and augment it with a statistical algorithm for the run-and-tumble motion. We…
Colonies of bacteria endowed with a pili-based self-propulsion machinery are ideal models for investigating the structure and dynamics of active many-particle systems. We study Neisseria gonorrhoeae colonies with a molecular-dynamics-based…
E.coli serves as prototype for the study of peritrichous enteric bacteria that perform runs and tumbles alternately. Bacteria run forward as a result of the counterclockwise (CCW) rotation of their flagella bundle and perform tumbles when…
One striking feature of bacterial motion is their ability to swim upstream along corners and crevices, by leveraging hydrodynamic interactions. This motion through anatomic ducts or medical devices might be at the origin of serious…
Peritrichous bacteria such as Escherichia coli swim in viscous fluids by forming a helical bundle of flagellar filaments. The filaments are spatially distributed around the cell body to which they are connected via a flexible hook. To…
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…