Related papers: Encounter rates between bacteria and small sinking…
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…
Active matter exhibits various forms of non-equilibrium states in the absence of external forcing, including macroscopic steady-state currents. Such states are often too complex to be modelled from first principles and our understanding of…
The interaction lifetimes between condensate-forming biomolecules can dictate both the specificity of the condensate-forming species as well as the fluidity and exchange dynamics of these condensates. Using a heuristic modeling approach, we…
Randomly moving active particles can be herded into directed motion by asymmetric geometric structures. Although such a rectification process has been extensively studied due to its fundamental, biological, and technological relevance, a…
Simple homogeneous shear flows of frictionless, deformable particles are studied by particle simulations at large shear rates and for differently soft, deformable particles. The particle stiffness sets a time-scale that can be used to scale…
Protein-protein interactions comprise both transport and reaction steps. During the transport step, anisotropy of proteins and their complexes is important both for hydrodynamic diffusion and accessibility of the binding site. Using a…
Dispersants aid the breakup of crude oil masses and increase the available interfacial surface area for bacteria to degrade insoluble hydrocarbons in the marine environment. However, this common view neglects key aspects of the microscale…
This study explores the application of elongated particle interaction models, traditionally used in liquid crystal phase research, in the context of early bacterial biofilm development. Through computer simulations using an agent-based…
Conjugation accelerates bacterial evolution by enabling bacteria to acquire genes horizontally from their neighbors. Plasmid donors must physically encounter and connect with recipients to allow plasmid transfer, and different environments…
Understanding flow and transport of bacteria in porous media is crucial to technologies such as bioremediation, biomineralization or enhanced oil recovery. While physicochemical bacteria filtration is well-documented, recent studies showed…
The transport of particles across lipid-bilayer membranes is important for biological cells to exchange information and material with their environment. Large particles often get wrapped by membranes, a process which has been intensively…
Self-organized dynamic patterns in dense active matter are striking manifestations of non-equilibrium physics. A prominent example is the macroscopic elliptical motion observed in quasi-2D bacterial suspensions, which has lacked a physical…
Describing the diffusion of particles through crowded, confined environments with which they can interact is of considerable biological and technological interest. Under conditions where the confinement dimensions become comparable to the…
The sedimentation process in a suspension of bacteria is the result of the competition between gravity and the intrinsic motion of the microorganisms. We perform simulations of run-and-tumble "squirmers" that move in a fluid medium,…
Every solid particle in the atmosphere, from ice crystals and pollen to dust, ash, and microplastics, is non-spherical. These particles play significant roles in Earth's climate system, influencing temperature, weather patterns, natural…
In active matter, the lack of momentum conservation makes non-reciprocal interactions the rule rather than the exception. They lead to a rich set of emerging behaviors that are hard to account for and to predict starting from the…
Planetary systems with sufficiently small orbital spacings can experience planetary mergers and ejections. The branching ratio of mergers vs ejections depends sensitively on the treatment of planetary close encounters. Previous works have…
The persistent motion of bacteria produces clusters with a stationary cluster size distribution (CSD). Here we develop a minimal model for bacteria in a narrow channel to assess the relative importance of motility diversity (i.e.…
The rheology of dense granular shear flows is influenced by friction and particle shape. We investigate numerically the impact of non-spherical particle geometries under shear on packing fraction, stress ratios, velocity fluctuations, force…
Biomolecular condensates play a crucial role in the spatial organization of living matter. These membrane-less organelles, resulting from liquid-liquid phase separation, operate far from thermodynamic equilibrium, with their size and…