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Liquid-liquid phase separation is important across biology, physics, and materials science. Although usually studied at equilibrium, active components - such as motor proteins, enzymes, and synthetic microswimmers - are increasingly…
The incessant activity of swimming microorganisms has a direct physical effect on surrounding microscopic objects, leading to enhanced diffusion far beyond the level of Brownian motion with possible influences on the spatial distribution of…
Spermatozoa flagella are known to synchronize when swimming in close proximity. We use a model consisting of two-dimensional sheets propagating transverse waves of displacement to demonstrate that fluid forces lead to such synchronization…
This study systematically investigates the dynamics of the bacterial transition from free-swimming to surface adhesion, a process characterized by both height $h$ and inclination angle $\Psi$. The surface entrapment process is divided into…
Microphase separation of membrane components is thought to play an important role in many physiological processes, from cell signaling to endocytosis and cellular trafficking. Here, we study how variations in the membrane composition can be…
Single flagellated bacteria are ubiquitous in nature. They exhibit various swimming modes using their flagella to explore complex surroundings such as soil and porous polymer networks. Some single-flagellated bacteria swim with two distinct…
The realization of artificial microscopic swimmers able to propel in viscous fluids is an emergent research field of fundamental interest and vast technological applications. For certain functionalities, the efficiency of the microswimmer…
Various microfluidic systems, such as chemical and biological lab-on-a-chip devices, involve motion of multiple droplets within an immersing fluid in shallow micro-channels. Modeling the dynamics of such systems requires calculation of the…
Propelling microorganisms through fluids and moving fluids along cellular surfaces are essential biological functions accomplished by long, thin structures called motile cilia and flagella, whose regular, oscillatory beating breaks the…
Microbial flagellates typically inhabit complex suspensions of polymeric material which can impact the swimming speed of motile microbes, filter-feeding of sessile cells, and the generation of biofilms. There is currently a need to better…
Swimming microorganisms can influence the diffusion of passive particles. The effect of this swimmer-particle interaction depends on different properties, such as the hydrodynamic field of the swimmer and the relative sizes of…
The microaerophilic magnetotactic bacterium Magnetospirillum gryphiswaldense swims along magnetic field lines using a single flagellum at each cell pole. It is believed that this magnetotactic behavior enables cells to seek optimal oxygen…
Microswimmers are sub-millimeter swimming microrobots that show potential as a platform for controllable locomotion in applications including targeted cargo delivery and minimally invasive surgery. To be viable for these target…
Typical bodily and environmental fluids encountered by biological swimmers consist of dissolved macromolecules such as proteins and polymers, often rendering them non Newtonian. To mimic such scenarios, we investigate the motion of swimming…
The recent discovery of the striking sheet-like multicellular choanoflagellate species $Choanoeca~flexa$ that dynamically interconverts between two hemispherical forms of opposite orientation raises fundamental questions in cell and…
Bacterial swimming is well characterized in uniform liquids at rest. The natural habitat of bacterial swimmers, however, is often dominated by moving fluids and interfaces, resulting in shear flows that may strongly alter bacterial…
Axonemal dyneins are the molecular motors responsible for the beating of cilia and flagella. These motors generate sliding forces between adjacent microtubule doublets within the axoneme, the motile cytoskeletal structure inside the…
The twisting and writhing of a cell body and associated mechanical stresses is an underappreciated constraint on microbial self-propulsion. Multi-flagellated bacteria can even buckle and writhe under their own activity as they swim through…
Marine microorganisms must cope with complex flow patterns and even turbulence as they navigate the ocean. To survive they must avoid predation and find efficient energy sources. A major difficulty in analysing possible survival strategies…
Biomedical applications such as targeted drug delivery, microsurgery, and sensing rely on reaching precise areas within the body in a minimally invasive way. Artificial bacterial flagella (ABFs) have emerged as potential tools for this task…