Related papers: A biophysical threshold for biofilm formation
We present a two-species population model in a well-mixed environment where the dynamics involves, in addition to birth and death, changes due to environmental factors and inter-species interactions. The novel dynamical components are…
Bacteria commonly live in structured communities that affect human health and influence ecological systems. Heterogeneous populations, such as motile and non-motile populations, often coexist in bacteria communities. Motile subpopulations…
We present a generic mechanism by which reproducing microorganisms, with a diffusivity that depends on the local population density, can form stable patterns. It is known that a decrease of swimming speed with density can promote separation…
There is significant interest in modelling the mechanics and physics of growth of soft biological systems such as tumors and bacterial biofilms. Solid tumors account for more than 85% of cancer mortality and bacterial biofilms account for a…
Motility is characteristic of life, but a common basis for movement has remained to be identified. Diverse systems in motion shift between two states depending on interactions that turnover at the rate of an applied cycle of force. Although…
Single-molecule biophysics has transformed our understanding of the fundamental molecular processes involved in living biological systems, but also of the fascinating physics of life. Far more exotic than a collection of exemplars of soft…
Quantifying the action of antibiotics on biofilms is essential to devise therapies against chronic infections. Biofilms are bacterial communities attached to moist surfaces, sheltered from external aggressions by a polymeric matrix.…
Unicellular microscopic organisms living in aqueous environments outnumber all other creatures on Earth. A large proportion of them are able to self-propel in fluids with a vast diversity of swimming gaits and motility patterns. In this…
Bacteria are able to respond to environmental signals by changing their rules of movement. When we take into account chemical signals in the environment, this behaviour is often called chemotaxis. At the individual-level, chemotaxis…
Advances in cellular imaging technologies, especially those based on fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) now allow detailed visualization of the spatial organization of human or bacterial cells. Quantifying this spatial organization…
Creating the best possible conditions is essential for proper cell growth. Incubators, a type of biotechnological instrument, are used to simulate this condition and maintain the cells within them. The processes involved in creating a…
Eukaryotic cell motility involves a complex network of interactions between biochemical components and mechanical processes. The cell employs this network to polarize and induce shape changes that give rise to membrane protrusions and…
The diffusion of particles in complex media has gained significant interest due to its dual relevance: probing the viscoelastic properties of materials via microrheology and assessing the extent of particle displacement over time. In this…
Microbes require several complex organic molecules for growth. A species may obtain a required factor by taking up molecules released by other species or by synthesizing the molecule. The patterns of uptake and synthesis set a flow of…
Cell walls define a cell shape in bacteria. They are rigid to resist large internal pressures, but remarkably plastic to adapt to a wide range of external forces and geometric constraints. Currently, it is unknown how bacteria maintain…
Biological systems excel at building spatial structures on scales ranging from nanometers to kilometers and exhibit temporal patterning from milliseconds to years. One approach that nature has taken to accomplish this relies on the…
The dynamics of microbial communities is incredibly complex, determined by competition for metabolic substrates and cross-feeding of byproducts. Species in the community grow by harvesting energy from chemical reactions that transform…
Active agents - like phoretic particles, bacteria, sperm, and cytoskeletal filaments in motility assays - show a large variety of motility-induced collective behaviors, such as aggregation, clustering and phase separation. The behavior of…
Constructing physical models of living cells and tissues is an extremely challenging task because of the high complexities of both intra- and intercellular processes. In addition, the force that a single cell generates vanishes in total due…
Free boundaries of biofilms advancing on surfaces evolve according to conservation laws coupled with systems of partial differential equations for velocities, pressures and chemicals affecting cell behavior. Thin film approximations lead to…