Related papers: Microbial narrow-escape is facilitated by wall int…

The persistent dynamics of active particles makes them explore extended portions of an obstacle's boundary during collisions. From impact to escape, the net applied forces depend on the curvature of the wall and increase in the presence of…

Foraging, either solitarily or collectively, is a necessary behavior for survival that is demonstrated by many organisms. Foraging can be collectively optimized by utilizing communication between the organisms. Examples of such…

We revise the encounter-based approach to imperfect diffusion-controlled reactions, which employs the statistics of encounters between a diffusing particle and the reactive region to implement surface reactions. We extend this approach to…

In the absence of environmental cues, a migrating cell performs an isotropic random motion. Recently, the breaking of this isotropy has been observed when cells move in the presence of asymmetric adhesive patterns. However, up to now the…

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…

The transport of particles through channels holds immense significance in physics, chemistry, and biological sciences. For instance, the motion of solutes through biological channels is facilitated by specialized proteins that create…

The physical mechanism of microbial motion near solid-liquid interfaces is crucial for understanding various biological phenomena and developing ecological applications. However, limited works have been conducted on the swimming behavior of…

Recent experiments on the green alga Chlamydomonas that swims using synchronized beating of a pair of flagella have revealed that it exhibits a run-and-tumble behavior similar to that of bacteria such as E. Coli. Using a simple purely…

Differently from passive Brownian particles, active particles, also known as self-propelled Brownian particles or microswimmers and nanoswimmers, are capable of taking up energy from their environment and converting it into directed motion.…

Crowd movements are observed among different species and on different scales, from insects to mammals, as well as in non-cognitive systems, such as motile cells. When forced to escape through a narrow opening, most terrestrial animals…

The hydrodynamics of a flagellated microorganism is investigated when swimming close to a planar free-slip surface by means of numerical solu- tions of the Stokes equations obtained via a Boundary Element Method. Depending on the initial…

We propose an efficient numerical approach to simulate the boundary local time of reflected Brownian motion, as well as the time and position of the associated reaction event on a smooth boundary of a Euclidean domain. This approach…

We investigate the behavior of a treadmilling microswimmer in a two-dimensional unbounded domain with a semi-infinite no-slip wall. The wall can also be regarded as a probe or pipette inserted into the flow. We solve the governing evolution…

Slender bodies capable of spontaneous motion in the absence of external actuation in an otherwise quiescent fluid are common in biological, physical and technological contexts. The interplay between the spontaneous fluid flow, Brownian…

Transport of rodlike particles in confinement environments of macromolecular networks plays crucial roles in many important biological processes and technological applications. The relevant understanding has been limited to thin rods with…

A variety of swimming microorganisms, called ciliates, exploit the bending of a large number of small and densely-packed organelles, termed cilia, in order to propel themselves in a viscous fluid. We consider a spherical envelope model for…

A simple theoretical approach is used to investigate active colloids at the free interface and near repulsive substrates. We employ dynamical density functional theory to determine the steady-state density profiles in an effective…

As for many motile micro-algae, the freshwater species Chlamydomonas reinhardtii can detect light sources and adapt its motile behavior in response. Here, we show that suspensions of photophobic cells can be unstable to density…

Cell movement, for example during embryogenesis or tumor metastasis, is a complex dynamical process resulting from an intricate interplay of multiple components of the cellular migration machinery. At first sight, the paths of migrating…

Active transport of biomolecular condensates and cell migration in collectives are fundamental to development, homeostasis, and processes such as cancer progression, wound healing, and infection response. Yet how these assemblies are…