Related papers: Molecular and colloidal transport in bacterial cel…
How motile bacteria move near a surface is a problem of fundamental biophysical interest and is key to the emergence of several phenomena of biological, ecological and medical relevance, including biofilm formation. Solid boundaries can…
Bacterial biofilms are among the oldest and most prevalent multicellular life forms on Earth and are increasingly relevant in research areas related to industrial fouling, medicine and biotechnology. The main hurdles to obtaining definitive…
In growing active matter systems, a large collection of engineered or living autonomous units metabolize free energy and create order at different length scales as they proliferate and migrate collectively. One such example is bacterial…
Microcolonies are aggregates of a few dozen to a few thousand cells exhibited by many bacteria. The formation of microcolonies is a crucial step towards the formation of more mature bacterial communities known as biofilms, but also marks a…
Active nematics are the nonequilibrium analog of passive liquid crystals in which anisotropic units consume free energy to drive emergent behavior. Similar to liquid crystal (LC) molecules in displays, ordering and dynamics in active…
Flagellar-driven locomotion plays a critical role in bacterial attachment and colonization of surfaces, contributing to the risks of contamination and infection. Tremendous attempts to uncover the underlying principles governing bacterial…
Growing tissue and bacterial colonies are active matter systems where cell divisions and cellular motion generate active stress. Although they operate in the non-equilibrium regime, these biological systems can form large-scale ordered…
Mesh-like structures, such as mucus gel or cytoskeleton networks, are ubiquitous in biological systems. These intricate structures are composed of cross-linked, semi-flexible bio-filaments, crucial to numerous biological processes. In many…
A biofilm is a microbial city. It consists of bacteria embedded in an extracellular polymeric substance (EPS) that functions as a protective barrier. Quorum sensing (QS) is a method of bacterial communication, where autoinducers (AIs)…
Recent experiments reveal both passive subdiffusion of various nanoparticles and anomalous active transport of such particles by molecular motors in the molecularly crowded environment of living biological cells. Passive and active…
The transport of bio-particles in viscous flows exhibits a rich variety of dynamical behaviour, such as morphological transitions, complex orientation dynamics or deformations. Characterising such complex behaviour under well controlled…
In biological systems, molecular-scale forces and motions are pivotal for enabling processes like motility, shape change, and replication. These forces and motions are organized, amplified, and transmitted across macroscopic scales by…
Bacterial growth and division generally occur by the process known as binary fission, in which the cells grow polarly until they divide into two daughter cells. Although this process is affected by factors that introduce stochastic…
Cell tracking enables data extraction from time-lapse "cell movies" and promotes modeling biological processes at the single-cell level. We introduce a new fully automated computational strategy to track accurately cells across frames in…
Thin films made of deformable micro- and nano-units, such as biological membranes, polymer interfaces, and particle-laden liquid surfaces, exhibit a complex behavior during drying, with consequences for various applications like wound…
Throughout our history, we, humans, have sought to better control and understand our environment. To this end, we have extended our natural senses with a host of sensors-tools that enable us to detect both the very large, such as the…
The ability of many living systems to actively self-propel underlies critical biomedical, environmental, and industrial processes. While such active transport is well-studied in uniform settings, environmental complexities such as geometric…
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…
We derive a physiologically structured multiscale model for biofilm development. The model has components on two spatial scales, which induce different time scales into the problem. The macroscopic behavior of the system is modeled using…
Membrane pores are implicated in several critical functions, including cell fusion and the transport of signaling molecules for intercellular communication. However, these structural features are often difficult to probe directly. Droplet…