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Related papers: A phase diagram for bacterial swarming

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In natural environments, solid surfaces present both opportunities and challenges for bacteria. On one hand, they serve as platforms for biofilm formation, crucial for bacterial colonization and resilience in harsh conditions. On the other…

Biological Physics · Physics 2025-07-01 Antai Tao , Guangzhe Liu , Rongjing Zhang , Junhua Yuan

Active swarms, consisting of individual agents which consume energy to move or produce work, are known to generate a diverse range of collective behaviors. Many examples of active swarms are biological in nature (e.g., fish shoals and bird…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2019-02-06 Vladimir Khodygo , Martin T. Swain , Adil Mughal

We investigate a class of continuum models for the motion of a two-dimensional biological group under the influence of nonlocal social interactions. The dynamics may be uniquely decomposed into incompressible motion and potential motion.…

Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems · Physics 2007-05-23 C. M. Topaz , A. L. Bertozzi

Models based on surfactant driven instabilities have been employed to describe pattern formation by swarming bacteria. However, by definition, such models cannot account for the effect of bacterial sensing and decision making. Here we…

The role of activity on the hydrodynamic dispersion of bacteria in a model porous medium is studied by tracking thousands of bacteria in a microfluidic chip containing randomly placed pillars. We first evaluate the spreading dynamics of two…

We model an enclosed system of bacteria, whose motility-induced phase separation is coupled to slow population dynamics. Without noise, the system shows both static phase separation and a limit cycle, in which a rising global population…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2017-11-08 Tobias Grafke , Michael E. Cates , Eric Vanden-Eijnden

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…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-03-18 Alberto Dinelli , Ada Altieri , Julien Tailleur

Navigation of microorganisms is controlled by internal processes ultimately sensitive to mechanical or chemical signaling encountered along the path. In many natural environments, such as porous soils or physiological ducts, motile species…

Cell spreading is investigated at various scales in order to understand motility of living cells which is essential for a range of physiological activities in higher organisms as well as in microbes. At a microscopic scale, it has been seen…

Cell Behavior · Quantitative Biology 2009-11-13 A. Bhattacharyay

In this paper we present a hydrodynamic approach to describe the motion of migrating bacteria as a special class of self-propelled systems. Analytical and numerical calculations has been performed to study the behavior of our model in the…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2015-06-25 Zoltan Csahok , Andras Czirok

A wide spectrum of Peritrichous bacteria undergo considerable physiological changes when they are inoculated onto nutrition-rich surfaces and exhibit a rapid and collective migration denoted as swarming. Thereby, the length of such swarmer…

Biological Physics · Physics 2016-10-25 Thomas Eisenstecken , Jinglei Hu , Roland G. Winkler

Self-propelled bacteria are marvels of nature with a potential to power dynamic materials and microsystems of the future. The challenge is in commanding their chaotic behavior. By dispersing swimming Bacillus subtilis in a…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2016-12-21 Chenhui Peng , Taras Turiv , Yubing Guo , Qi-Huo Wei , Oleg D. Lavrentovich

In systems as diverse as migrating mammals to road traffic, crowding acts to inhibit efficient collective movement. Bacteria, however, are observed to move in very dense groups containing billions of individuals without causing the gridlock…

Microbiology is the science of microbes, particularly bacteria. Many bacteria are motile: they are capable of self-propulsion. Among these, a significant class execute so-called run-and-tumble motion: they follow a fairly straight path for…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2012-09-06 M. E. Cates

We introduce a general theoretical framework to study the shape dynamics of actively growing and remodeling surfaces. Using this framework we develop a physical model for growing bacterial cell walls and study the interplay of cell shape…

Biological Physics · Physics 2016-04-08 Shiladitya Banerjee , Norbert F. Scherer , Aaron R. Dinner

Bacteria commonly inhabit porous environments such as host tissues, soil, and marine sediments, where complex geometries constrain and redirect their motion. Although bacterial motility has been studied in porous media, the roles of cell…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-12-22 David Gao , Zeyuan Wang , Mihika Jain , Arnold J. T. M. Mathijssen , Ran Tao

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…

Populations and Evolution · Quantitative Biology 2025-01-17 John S. Chuang , Riccardo Rao , Stanislas Leibler

Bacterial cells navigate around their environment by directing their movement along chemical gradients. This process, known as chemotaxis, can promote the rapid expansion of bacterial populations into previously unoccupied territories.…

Populations and Evolution · Quantitative Biology 2022-06-08 Avaneesh V. Narla , Jonas Cremer , Terry Hwa

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…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2022-08-24 Marco Dentz , Adama Creppy , Carine Douarche , Eric Clément , Harold Auradou

How motile bacteria move near a surface is a problem of fundamental biophysical interest and is key to the emergence of several phenomena of biological, ecological and medical relevance, including biofilm formation. Solid boundaries can…

Biological Physics · Physics 2019-09-12 Stanislaw Makarchuk , Vasco C. Braz , Nuno A. M. Araújo , Lena Ciric , Giorgio Volpe