Related papers: Evolution of chemotactic hitchhiking
We study a generic model for the polarisation and motility of self-propelled soft objects, biological cells or biomimetic systems, interacting with a viscous substrate. The active forces generated by the cell on the substrate are modelled…
The ability of many living systems to actively self-propel underlies critical biomedical, environmental, and industrial processes. While such active transport is well-studied in uniform settings, environmental complexities such as geometric…
Bacteria suspension exhibits a wide range of collective phenomena arising from interactions between individual cells. Here we show Serratia marcescens cells near an air-liquid interface spontaneously aggregate into dynamic clusters through…
Biased locomotion is a common feature of microorganisms, but little is known about its impact on self-organisation. Inspired by recent experiments showing a transition to large-scale flows, we study theoretically the dynamics of…
A common feature of biological self-organization is how active agents communicate with each other or their environment via chemical signaling. Such communications, mediated by self-generated chemical gradients, have consequences for both…
Biological systems like ciliated microorganisms are capable to respond to the external chemical gradients, a process known as chemotaxis which has been studied here using the chiral squirmer model. This theoretical model considers the…
The near-surface swimming patterns of bacteria are strongly determined by the hydrodynamic interactions between bacteria and the surface, which trap bacteria in smooth circular trajectories that lead to inefficient surface exploration.…
The collective chemotaxis of multicellular clusters is an important phenomenon in various physiological contexts, ranging from embryonic development to cancer metastasis. Such clusters often display interesting shape dynamics and…
We revisit a recently proposed agent-based model of active biological motion and compare its predictions with own experimental findings for the speed distribution of bacterial cells, \emph{Salmonella typhimurium}. Agents move according to a…
Classic experiments on the distribution of ducks around separated food sources found consistency with the `ideal free' distribution in which the local population is proportional to the local supply rate. Motivated by this experiment and…
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…
The intricate wobbling motion of flagellated bacteria, characterized by the periodic precession of the cell body, is a determinant factor in their motility and navigation within complex fluid environments. While well-studied in quiescent…
Experimental studies of microbial communities routinely reveal that they have multiple stable states. While each of these states is generally resilient, certain perturbations such as antibiotics, probiotics and diet shifts, result in…
Many motile cells exhibit migratory behaviors, such as chemotaxis (motion up or down a chemical gradient) or chemokinesis (when speed depends on concentration), which enable them to carry out vital functions including immune response, egg…
Aberrantly regulated cell motility is a hallmark of cancer cells. A hybrid agent-based model has been developed to investigate the synergistic and antagonistic cell motility-impacting effects of three microenvironment variables…
Early theoretical work revealed that the simplest class of autocatalytic cycles, known as hypercycles, provide an elegant framework for understanding the evolution of mutualism. Furthermore, hypercycles are highly susceptible to parasites,…
In response to a concentration gradient of nutrient, E. coli bacterium modulates the rotational bias of flagellar motors which control its run-and-tumble motion, to migrate towards regions of high nutrient concentration. Presence of…
Microbial colonies cultured on agar Petri dishes have become a model system to study biological evolution in populations expanding in space. Processes such as clonal segregation and gene surfing have been shown to be affected by…
We investigate some chemostat models incorporating wall growth, competition, random fluctuations on the dilution rate, and different consumption functions (Monod and Haldane). We analyze the asymptotic behavior of the solutions of the…
Photosynthetic microbes have evolved and successfully adapted to the ever-changing environmental conditions in complex microhabitats throughout almost all ecosystems on Earth. In the absence of light, they can sustain their biological…