Related papers: Polymer-induced microcolony compaction in early bi…
The presence of bacterial biofilms in clinical and industrial settings is a major issue worldwide. A biofilm is a viscoelastic matrix, composed of bacteria producing a network of Extracellular Polymeric Substances (EPS) to which bacteria…
The growth of a rough and porous thin surface by deposition of randomly shaped clusters with different sizes over an initially flat linear substrate is simulated, using Monte Carlo technique. Unlike the ordinary Random Deposition, our…
The formation of planetesimals is often accredited to collisional sticking of dust grains. The exact process is unknown, as collisions between larger aggregates tend to lead to fragmentation or bouncing rather than sticking. Recent…
Bacteria aggregate through various intercellular interactions to build biofilms, but the effect of environmental changes thereupon remains largely unexplored. Here, by using an experimental device that overcomes past difficulties, we…
Biofilms are spatially organized microorganism colonies embedded in a self-produced matrix, conferring to the microbial community resistance to environmental stresses. Motile bacteria have been observed swimming in the matrix of pathogenic…
Partitioning of (bio)materials in polymeric mixtures is a key phenomenon both in cellular environments, as well as in industrial applications. In cells, several macromolecules are suspended within different biomolecular phases. On the other…
Contact inhibition plays a crucial role in the motility of cells, the process of wound healing, and the formation of tumors. By mimicking the mechanical motion of calls crawling on a substrate using a pseudopod, we constructed a minimal…
Depletion forces play a role in the compaction and de-compation of chromosomal material in simple cells but it remains debatable whether they are sufficient to account for chromosomal collapse. We present coarse-grained molecular dynamics…
Immotile microbes inhabit nearly every environment on Earth, from soils and sediments to food matrices -- yet how they disperse through these physically confining environments is poorly understood. Here, we show that immotile microbial…
This article presents a physical biology approach to understanding organization and segregation of bacterial chromosomes. The author uses a "piston" analogy for bacterial chromosomes in a cell, which leads to a phase diagram for the…
Density-dependent diffusion is a widespread phenomenon in nature. We have examined the density-dependent diffusion behavior of some biological processes such as tumor growth and invasion [23]. Here, we extend our previous work by developing…
Bacteria often develop distinct phenotypes to adapt to environmental stress. In particular, they can produce biofilms, dense communities of bacteria that live in a complex extracellular matrix. Bacterial biofilms provide a safe haven from…
Phase separation within polymer networks plays a central role in shaping the structure and mechanics of both synthetic materials and living cells, including the formation of biomolecular condensates within cytoskeletal networks. Previous…
Plants and insects use slender conical structures to transport and collect small droplets, which are propelled along the conical structures due to capillary action. These droplets can deposit a fluid film during their motion, but despite…
Nanostructured films obtained by the assembling of preformed atomic clusters are of strategic importance for a wide variety of applications. The deposition of clusters produced in the gas phase onto a substrate offers the possibility to…
The early planetesimal growth proceeds through a sequence of sticking collisions of dust agglomerates. Very uncertain is still the relative velocity regime in which growth rather than destruction can take place. The outcome of a collision…
Controlling and suppressing bacterial accumulation at solid surfaces is essential for preventing biofilm formation and biofouling. Whereas various chemical surface treatments are known to reduce cell accumulation and attachment, the role of…
The accretion of pebbles on planetary cores has been widely studied in recent years and is found to be a highly effective mechanism for planetary growth. While most studies assume planetary cores as an initial condition in their simulation,…
In this letter we propose a kinematic model to show how collisions with a surface and rotational Brownian motion give rise to the accumulation of micro-swimmers near a surface. In this model, an elongated microswimmer invariably travels…
Soft colloids allow to explore high density states well beyond random close packing. An important open question is whether softness controls the dynamics under these dense conditions. While experimental works reported conflicting results,…