Related papers: A phase diagram for bacterial swarming
Propagating spiral waves have been discovered in various chemical, biological and physical systems. Spiral waves in multicellular organisms are often associated with essential living functions. Although certain eukaryotic microorganisms…
Bacteria are prolific at colonizing diverse surfaces under a widerange of environmental conditions, and exhibit fascinating examples of self-organization across scales. Though it has recently attracted considerable interest, the role of…
Distinguishing between swarming and swimming, the two principal forms of bacterial movement, holds significant conceptual and clinical relevance. This is because bacteria that exhibit swarming capabilities often possess unique properties…
A major challenge in the study of active matter lies in quantitative characterization of phases and transitions between them. We show how the entropy of a collection of active objects can be used to classify regimes and spatial patterns in…
Colonies of bacteria grown on thin agar plate exhibit fractal patterns as a result of adaptation to their environments. The bacterial colony pattern formation is regulated crucially by chemotaxis, the movement of cells along a chemical…
We use moving light patterns to control the motion of {\it Escherichia coli} bacteria whose motility is photo-activated. Varying the pattern speed controls the magnitude and direction of the bacterial flux, and therefore the accumulation of…
Communication and coordination play a major role in the ability of bacterial cells to adapt to ever changing environments and conditions. Recent work has shown that such coordination underlies several aspects of bacterial responses…
We study the transport of bacteria in a porous media modeled by a square channel containing one cylindrical obstacle via molecular dynamics simulations coupled to a lattice Boltzmann fluid. Our bacteria model is a rod-shaped rigid body…
Many animals in their natural habitat exhibit collective motion and form complex patterns to tackle environmental difficulties. Several physical and biological factors, such as animal motility, population densities, and chemical cues, play…
Biological active materials such as bacterial biofilms and eukaryotic cells thrive in confined micro-spaces. Here, we show through numerical simulations that confinement can serve as a mechanical guidance to achieve distinct modes of…
We experimentally study the emergence of collective bacterial swimming, a phenomenon often referred to as bacterial turbulence. A phase diagram of the flow of 3D E. coli suspensions spanned by bacterial concentration, the swimming speed of…
Run-and-tumble is a common but vital strategy that bacteria employ to explore environment suffused with boundaries, as well as to escape from entrapment. In this study we reveal how this strategy and the resulting dynamical behavior can be…
The mechanics of crawling cells on a substrate is investigated by using a minimal model that satisfies the force-free condition. A cell is described by two subcellular elements connected by a linear actuator that changes the length of the…
Bacterial colonies are abundant on living and nonliving surfaces and are known to mediate a broad range of processes in ecology, medicine, and industry. Although extensively researched, from single cells to demographic scales, a…
In nature, microorganisms must often cope with hostile environmental conditions. To do so they have developed sophisticated cooperative behavior and intricate communication capabilities, such as: direct cell-cell physical interactions via…
It has recently been reported that bacteria, such as E.coli and P. putida, perform distinct modes of motion when placed in porous media as compared to dilute regions or free space. This has led us to suggest an efficient strategy for active…
Phagocytosis is the process by which cells, which are 5 to 10 times larger than the particle size, engulf particles, holding substantial importance in various biological contexts ranging from the nutrient uptake of unicellular organisms to…
During colony growth, complex interactions regulate the bacterial orientation, leading to the formation of large-scale ordered structures, including topological defects and microdomains. These structures may benefit bacterial strains,…
The evolutionary success of bacteria lies in their ability to form complex surface-associated communities in diverse biophysical settings. However, it remains poorly understood how compliance of soft surfaces, measured in terms of their…
Many motile microorganisms react to environmental light cues with a variety of motility responses guiding cells towards better conditions for survival and growth. The use of spatial light modulators could help to elucidate the mechanisms of…