Related papers: Biofilm Growth Under Elastic Confinement
Surface growth, by association or dissociation of material on the boundaries of a body, is ubiquitous in both natural and engineering systems. It is the fundamental mechanism by which biological materials grow, starting from the level of a…
We developed a consistent mathematical model for isotropic crystal growth on a substrate covered by the mask material with a periodic series of parallel long trenches where the substrate is exposed to the vapor phase. Surface diffusion and…
Bi$_2$Se$_3$ is a widely studied 3D topological insulator having potential applications in optics, electronics, and spintronics. When the thickness of these films decrease to less than approximately 6 nm, the top and bottom surface states…
Confined thin structures are ubiquitous in nature. Spatial and length constraints have led to a number of novel packing strategies at both the micro-scale, as when DNA packages inside a capsid, and the macro-scale, seen in plant root…
Inspired by the formation of geological structures as earth's crust deforms by magmatic intrusions, we investigate the elastohydrodynamic growth of a viscoplastic blister under an elastic sheet. By combining experiments, scaling analysis…
Polymer association at liquid-liquid interfaces is a promising way to spontaneously obtain soft self-healing membranes. In the case of reversible bonding between two polymers, the macromolecules are mobile everywhere within the membrane and…
Biofilm infections on medical implants are difficult to eradicate because insufficient nutrient availability promotes antibiotic-tolerant persister cells that survive treatment and reseed growth. Existing mathematical models usually omit…
The focus of this paper is the numerical solution of a pore-scale model for the growth of a permeable biofilm. The model includes water flux inside the biofilm, different biofilm components, and shear stress on the biofilm-water interface.…
Motility is a fundamental survival strategy of bacteria to navigate porous environments. Swimming cells thrive in quiescent wetlands and sediments at the bottom of the marine water column, where they mediate many essential biogeochemical…
A multiscale mathematical model describing the genesis and ecology of algal-bacterial photogranules and the metals biosorption on their solid matrix within a sequencing batch reactor (SBR) is presented. The granular biofilm is modelled as a…
The migratory dynamics of cells can be influenced by the complex micro-environment through which they move. It remains unclear how the motility machinery of confined cells responds and adapts to their micro-environment. Here, we propose a…
A discrete-to-continuum analysis for free-boundary problems related to crystalline films deposited on substrates is performed by $\Gamma$-convergence. The discrete model here introduced is characterized by an energy with two contributions,…
We investigate the dynamics of a colony of crawling, proliferating cells with a minimal, mechanical cell model. The cells consist of two disks, modelling the cell body and a pseudopod, connected by a finite extensible spring. The cells…
The expansion of biological species in natural environments is usually described as the combined effect of individual spatial dispersal and growth. In the case of aquatic ecosystems flow transport can also be extremely relevant as an extra,…
In this paper a reduced one-dimensional moving boundary model is studied that describes the evolution of a biofilm driven by the presence of a reaction limiting substrate. Global well-posedness is established for the resulting parabolic…
Understanding how bacteria move in porous media is critical to applications in healthcare, agriculture, environmental remediation, and chemical sensing. Recent work has demonstrated that E. coli, which moves by run-and-tumble dynamics in a…
Living active collectives have evolved with remarkable self-patterning ability to meet the physical and biological constraints for growth and survival. However, how complex multicellular patterns emerge from a single founder cell remains…
Biofilm accumulation in the porous media can cause plugging and change many physical properties of porous media. Targeted bioplugging may have significant applications for industrial processes. A deeper understanding of the relative…
Understanding how growth induces form is a longstanding biological question. Many studies concentrated on the shapes of plant cells, fungi or bacteria. Some others have shown the importance of the mechanical properties of bacterial walls…
Bacterial biofilms play a significant role in various fields that impact our daily lives, from detrimental public health hazards to beneficial applications in bioremediation, biodegradation, and wastewater treatment. However,…