Related papers: Synchrony and symmetry-breaking in active flagella…
Active gels are a class of biologically-relevant material containing embedded agents that spontaneously generate forces acting on a sparse filament network. In vitro experiments of protein filaments and molecular motors have revealed a…
Biological microfilaments exhibit a variety of synchronization modes. Recent experiments observed that a pair of isolated eukaryotic flagella, coupled solely via the fluid medium, display synchrony at nontrivial phase-lags in addition to…
Synchronization was observed in various biological systems such as flashing of fireflies and chorus of frogs. In this study, we report wavy synchronization in the locomotion of train millepedes (Parafontaria laminata armigera) and examine…
Interactions between swimming cells and surfaces are essential to many microbiological processes, from bacterial biofilm formation to human fertilization. However, in spite of their fundamental importance, relatively little is known about…
Swimming microorganisms rely on effective mixing strategies to achieve efficient nutrient influx. Recent experiments, probing the mixing capability of unicellular biflagellates, revealed that passive tracer particles exhibit anomalous…
C. elegans locomotion is composed of switches between forward and reversal states punctuated by turns. This locomotory capability is necessary for the nematode to move towards attractive stimuli, escape noxious chemicals, and explore its…
Oscillatory flows are commonly experienced by swimming microorganisms in the environment, industrial applications and rheological investigations. We experimentally characterise the response of the alga {\it Dunaliella salina} to oscillatory…
The course of a peritrichous bacterium such as E. coli crucially depends on the level of synchronization and self-organization of several rotating flagella. However, the rotation of each flagellum generates counter body movements which in…
Some types of bacteria use rotating helical flagella to swim. The motion of such organisms takes place in the regime of low Reynolds numbers where viscous effects dominate and where the dynamics is governed by hydrodynamic interactions.…
Locomotion is essential for living cells. It enables bacteria and algae to explore space for food, cancer to spread, and immune system to fight infections. Motile cells display trajectories of intriguing complexity, from regular (e.g.…
Large groups of active cilia collectively beat in a fluid medium as metachronal waves, essential for some microorganisms motility and for flow generation in mucociliary clearance. Several models can predict the emergence of metachronal…
Interactions between microorganisms and solid boundaries play an important role in biological processes, like egg fertilisation, biofilm formation and soil colonisation, where microswimmers move within a structured environment. Despite…
The flagellated bacterium Escherichia coli is increasingly used experimentally as a self-propelled swimmer. To obtain meaningful, quantitative results that are comparable between different laboratories, reproducible protocols are needed to…
The symmetry breaking of the actin network from radial to longitudinal symmetry has been identified as the major mechanism for keratocytes (fish cells) motility on solid substrate. For strong friction coefficient, the two dimensional actin…
Cerebellar-like networks, in which input activity patterns are separated by projection to a much higher-dimensional space before classification, are a recurring neurobiological motif, present in the cerebellum, dentate gyrus, insect…
During development, highly ordered structures emerge as cells collectively coordinate with each other. While recent advances have clarified how individual cells process and respond to external signals, understanding collective cellular…
Collective locomotion of swimming and flying animals is fascinating in terms of individual-level fluid mechanics and group-level structure and dynamics. Here we bridge and relate these scales through a model of formation flight that views…
Many microswimmers are able to swim through viscous fluids by employing periodic non-reciprocal deformations of their appendages. Here we use a simple microswimmer model inspired by swimming biflagellates which consists of a spherical cell…
Swimming cells and microorganisms are as diverse in their collective dynamics as they are in their individual shapes and propulsion mechanisms. Even for sperm cells, which have a stereotyped shape consisting of a cell body connected to a…
Bacteria can form a great variety of spatially heterogeneous cell density patterns, ranging from simple concentric rings to dynamical spiral waves appearing in growing colonies. These pattern formation phenomena are important as they…