Related papers: Ciliary beating patterns map onto a low-dimensiona…
Subcellular protein complexes and organelles exhibit diverse dynamic behaviors that reflect the mechanical constraints and organization of the intracellular environment. Although some structures follow classical Brownian motion, many…
Unlike Newtonian fluids, viscoelastic fluids may break time-reversal symmetry at low Reynolds numbers resulting in elastic turbulence. Furthermore, under some conditions, instead of the chaotic turbulence, large-scale regular waves form, as…
Contact between particles and motile cells underpins a wide variety of biological processes, from nutrient capture and ligand binding, to grazing, viral infection and cell-cell communication. The window of opportunity for these interactions…
Liquid-liquid phase separation is important across biology, physics, and materials science. Although usually studied at equilibrium, active components - such as motor proteins, enzymes, and synthetic microswimmers - are increasingly…
Adaptation to environmental change is a common property of biological systems. Cells initially respond to external changes in the environment, but after some time, they regain their original state. By considering an element consisting of…
The green alga {\it Chlamydomonas} swims with synchronized beating of its two flagella, and is experimentally observed to exhibit run-and-tumble behaviour similar to bacteria. Recently we studied a simple hydrodynamic three-sphere model of…
Biological tissues exhibit complex behaviors with their dynamics often resembling inert soft matter such as liquids, polymers, colloids, and liquid crystals. These analogies enable physics-based approaches for investigations of emergent…
Microswimmers typically operate in complex environments. In biological systems, often diverse species are simultaneously present and interact with each other. Here, we derive a (time-dependent) particle-scale statistical description, namely…
Active matter exhibits various forms of non-equilibrium states in the absence of external forcing, including macroscopic steady-state currents. Such states are often too complex to be modelled from first principles and our understanding of…
The interlayer van der Waals interaction in twisted bilayer graphene (tBLG) induces both in-plane and out-of-plane atomic displacements showing complex patterns that depend on the twist angle. In particular, for small twist angles, within…
Dense bacterial suspensions exhibit turbulent-like flows at low Reynolds numbers, driven by the activity of the microswimmers. In this study, we develop a model system to examine these dynamics using motile colloids that mimic bacterial…
A major challenge in analyzing animal behavior is to discover some underlying simplicity in complex motor actions. Here we show that the space of shapes adopted by the nematode C. elegans is surprisingly low dimensional, with just four…
Although the auger-like 'swimming' motility of the African trypanosome was described upon its discovery over one hundred years ago, the precise biomechanical and biophysical properties of trypanosome flagellar motion has not been…
Pulsatory activity patterns, driven by mechanochemical feedback, are prevalent in many biological systems. Here we present a theoretical framework to elucidate the mechanical origin and regulation of pulsatile activity patterns within…
We present novel experimental results on pattern formation of signaling Dictyostelium discoideum amoeba in the presence of a periodic array of millimeter-sized pillars. We observe concentric cAMP waves that initiate almost synchronously at…
Cells have evolved efficient strategies to probe their surroundings and navigate through complex environments. From metastatic spread in the body to swimming cells in porous materials, escape through narrow constrictions - a key component…
Within biological fluid dynamics, it is conventional to distinguish between "puller" and "pusher" microswimmers on the basis of the forward or aft location of the flagella relative to the cell body: typically, bacteria are pushers and algae…
Cell motility in viscous fluids is ubiquitous and affects many biological processes, including reproduction, infection, and the marine life ecosystem. Here we review the biophysical and mechanical principles of locomotion at the small…
Green algae of the $Volvocine$ lineage, spanning from unicellular $Chlamydomonas$ to vastly larger $Volvox$, are models for the study of the evolution of multicellularity, flagellar dynamics, and developmental processes. Phototactic…
Bacteria predate plants and animals by billions of years. Today, they are the world's smallest cells yet they represent the bulk of the world's biomass, and the main reservoir of nutrients for higher organisms. Most bacteria can move on…