Related papers: Synchrony and symmetry-breaking in active flagella…
Motility is a fundamental feature of living matter, encompassing single cells and collective behavior. Such living systems are characterized by non-conservativity of energy and a large diversity of spatio-temporal patterns. Thus,…
Suspensions of swimming micro-organisms provide examples of coordinated active dynamics. That has stimulated the study of a phenomenological theory combining synchronization and polar order in active matter. Here, we consider another…
Eukaryotic swimming cells such as spermatozoa, algae or protozoa use flagella or cilia to move in viscous fluids. The motion of their flexible appendages in the surrounding fluid induces propulsive forces that balance with the viscous drag…
A swimming microorganism stirs the surrounding fluid, creating a flow field that governs not only its locomotion and nutrient uptake, but also its interactions with other microorganisms and the environment. Despite its fundamental…
The physical basis of flagellar and ciliary beating is a major problem in biology which is still far from completely understood. The fundamental cytoskeleton structure of cilia and flagella is the axoneme, a cylindrical array of microtubule…
Motile cilia are slender, hair-like cellular appendages that spontaneously oscillate under the action of internal molecular motors and are typically found in dense arrays. These active filaments coordinate their beating to generate…
The unicellular microalga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is widely recognized as a premier model living microswimmer for physicists and biophysicists. However, the interest around C. reinhardtii goes beyond its swimming capabilities. In fact,…
Unicellular microscopic organisms living in aqueous environments outnumber all other creatures on Earth. A large proportion of them are able to self-propel in fluids with a vast diversity of swimming gaits and motility patterns. In this…
Flocks of birds and schools of fish are familiar examples of spatial patterns formed by living organisms. In contrast to the patterns on the skins of, say, zebra and giraffe, the patterns of our interest are {\it transient} although…
We study the rhythmogenesis of oscillatory patterns emerging in network motifs composed of inhibitory coupled tonic spiking neurons represented by the Plant model of R15 nerve cells. Such motifs are argued to be used as building blocks for…
Synchronization plays a crucial role in the dynamics of living organisms, from fireflies flashing in unison to pacemaker cells that jointly generate heartbeats. Uncovering the mechanism behind these phenomena requires an understanding of…
All vertebrates are capable of performing various types of physical activity. Locomotor patterns are created by the cyclical coordinated work of the skeletal muscles. The organization of such a system in living organisms is responsible for…
A variety of swimming microorganisms, called ciliates, exploit the bending of a large number of small and densely-packed organelles, termed cilia, in order to propel themselves in a viscous fluid. We consider a spherical envelope model for…
In a recent letter (Friedrich et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 109:138102, 2012), a minimal model swimmer was proposed that propels itself at low Reynolds numbers by a revolving motion of a pair of spheres. The motion of the two spheres can…
Micro-organisms usually can swim in their liquid environment by flagellar or ciliary beating. In this numerical work, we analyze the influence of flagellar beating on the orbits of a swimming cell in a shear flow. We also calculate the…
Active flexible filaments form the classical continuum framework for modelling the locomotion of spermatozoa and algae driven by the periodic oscillation of flagella. This framework also applies to the locomotion of various artificial…
The modeling of the beating of cilia and flagella in fluids is a particularly active field of study, given the biological relevance of these organelles. Various mathematical models have been proposed to represent the nonlinear dynamics of…
Organisms use hair-like cilia that beat in a metachronal fashion to actively transport fluid and suspended particles. Metachronal motion emerges due to a phase difference between beating cycles of neighboring cilia and appears as traveling…
Inspired by recent experimental observation of patterning at the membrane of a living cell, we propose a generic model for the dynamics of a fluctuating interface driven by particle-like inclusions which stimulate its growth. We find that…
Recent experiments and numerical simulations have shown that certain types of microorganisms "reflect" off of a flat surface at a critical angle of departure, independent of the angle of incidence. The nature of the reflection may be active…