Related papers: Confinement-induced self-organization in growing b…
Chemotaxis receptors in E. coli form clusters at the cell poles and also laterally along the cell body, and this clustering plays an important role in signal transduction. Recently, experiments using flourrescence imaging have shown that,…
The striking variety of macroscopic morphologies displayed by bacterial colonies depends on microscopic environmental and behavioural details in a manner that is currently not well understood. A surprising example is sibling inhibition,…
Motivated by recent experiments on the rod-like virus bacteriophage fd, confined to circular and annular domains, we present a theoretical study of structural transitions in these geometries. Using the continuum theory of nematic liquid…
In the growth of bacterial colonies, a great variety of complex patterns are observed in experiments, depending on external conditions and the bacterial species. Typically, existing models employ systems of reaction-diffusion equations or…
Cellular self-assembly and organization are fundamental steps for the development of biological tissues. In this paper, within the framework of a cellular automata model, we address how an ordered tissue pattern spontaneously emerges from a…
We find a statistical mechanism that can adjust orientations of intracellular filaments to cell geometry in absence of organizing centers. The effect is based on random and isotropic filament (de-)polymerization dynamics and is independent…
Dense suspensions of swimming bacteria are known to exhibit collective behaviour arising from the interplay of steric and hydrodynamic interactions. Unconfined suspensions exhibit transient, recurring vortices and jets, whereas those…
Anisotropic collective patterns occur frequently in the morphogenesis of 2D biofilms. These patterns are often attributed to growth regulation mechanisms and differentiation based on gradients of diffusing nutrients and signalling…
A fundamental question regarding biological transport networks is the interplay between the network development or reorganization and the flows it carries. We use Physarum polycephalum, a true slime mould with a transport network which…
We use a two-fluid model to study a confined mixture of an active nematic fluid and a passive isotropic fluid. We find that an extensile active fluid preferentially accumulates at a boundary if the anchoring is planar, whereas its boundary…
We introduce the notion of cell division-induced activity and show that the cell division generates extensile forces and drives dynamical patterns in cell assemblies. Extending the hydrodynamic models of lyotropic active nematics we…
Collective behavior of proteins on biomembranes is usually studied within the spontaneous curvature model. Here we consider an alternative phenomenological approach, which accounts consistently for partial ordering of proteins as well as…
Hydrodynamics and confinement dominate bacterial mobility near solid or air-water boundaries, causing flagellated bacteria to move in circular trajectories. This phenomenon results from the counter-rotation between the bacterial body and…
We derive the constitutive equations of an active polar gel from a model for the dynamics of elastic molecules that link polar elements. Molecular binding kinetics induces the fluidization of the material, giving rise to Maxwell…
In cellular environment, confinement and macromulecular crowding play an important role on thermal stability and folding kinetics of a protein. We have resorted to a generalized version of the Wako-Saito-Munoz-Eaton model for protein…
Various bacterial strains (e.g. strains belonging to the genera Bacillus, Paenibacillus, Serratia and Salmonella) exhibit colonial branching patterns during growth on poor semi-solid substrates. These patterns reflect the bacterial…
Many swimming bacteria naturally inhabit confined environments, yet how confinement influences their swimming behaviors remains unclear. Here, we combine experiments, continuum modeling and particle-based simulations to investigate…
Collective cell migration plays an essential role in various biological processes, such as development or cancer proliferation. While cell-cell interactions are clearly key determinants of collective cell migration -- in addition to…
We study the steady state of an assembly of microtubules in a confined volume, analogous to the situation inside a cell where the cell boundary forms a natural barrier to growth. We show that the dynamical equations for growing and…
We study a dense colloidal suspension confined between two quasiparallel glass plates as a model system for a supercooled liquid in confined geometries. We directly observe the three-dimensional Brownian motion of the colloidal particles…