Related papers: Molecular and colloidal transport in bacterial cel…
Improving building energy performance requires the development of new highly insulative materials. An affordable retrofitting solution comprising a thin film could improve the resistance to heat flow in both residential and commercial…
Bacteria are ubiquitous in our daily lives, either as motile planktonic cells or as immobilized surface-attached biofilms. These different phenotypic states play key roles in agriculture, environment, industry, and medicine; hence, it is…
Bacteria invade surfaces by forming dense colonies encased in a polymer matrix. Successful settlement of founder bacteria, early microcolony development and later macroscopic spreading of these biofilms on surfaces rely on complex physical…
When a macroscopic droplet spreads, a thin precursor film of liquid moves ahead of the advancing liquid-solid-vapor contact line. Whereas this phenomenon has been explored extensively for planar solid substrates, its presence in…
It is well-known that the architecture of macromolecules plays an important role in the hydrodynamics and viscosity of its semi-diluted solutions. However, the systematic study of the rheology of macromolecules with complex topology, such…
Bacteria can adjust the structure of colonies and biofilms to enhance their survival rate under external stress. Here, we explore the link between bacterial interaction forces and colony structure. We show that the activity of extracellular…
Biomolecular condensates form by phase separation of biological polymers and have important functions in the cell $-$ functions that are inherently connected to their physical properties. A remarkable aspect of such condensates is that…
Viscosity is a fundamental property of liquids and determines the diffusivity of suspended particles. A gradient in viscosity leads to a gradient in diffusivity, yet it is unknown whether such a gradient can lead to directed transport of…
Bacterial swarming is a rapid mass-migration, in which thousands of cells spread collectively to colonize a surface. Physically, swarming is a natural example of active particles that use energy to generate motion. Accordingly,…
Bacteria can form a great variety of spatially heterogeneous cell density patterns, ranging from simple concentric rings to dynamical spiral waves appearing in growing colonies. These pattern formation phenomena are important as they…
As a complementary tool to nanofluidics, biomolecular based transport is envisioned for nanotechnological devices. We report a new method for guiding microtubule shuttles on multi-walled carbon nanotube tracks, aligned by dielectrophoresis…
Intracellular components explore the cytoplasm via active motor-driven transport in conjunction with passive diffusion. We model the motion of organelles in narrow tubular cells using analytical techniques and numerical simulations to study…
The motion of molecules across channels is critically important for understanding mechanisms of cellular processes. Here we investigate the mechanism of interactions in the molecular transport by analyzing exactly solvable discrete…
Many organisms form colonies for a transient period of time to withstand environmental pressure. Bacterial biofilms are a prototypical example of such behavior. Despite significant interest across disciplines, physical mechanisms governing…
Biological functionality of cellular aggregates is largely influenced by the activity and displacements of individual constituent cells. From a theoretical perspective this activity can be characterized by hydrodynamic transport…
We study the dynamics of micron-sized particles on a layer of motile cells. This cell carpet acts as an active bath that propels passive tracer particles via direct mechanical contact. The resulting nonequilibrium transport shows a…
Colloids coupled to a bath of swimming cells generically display enhanced diffusion. This transport dynamics stems from a subtle interplay between the active and passive particles that still resists our understanding despite decades of…
The kinesin superfamily of motor proteins is a major driver of anterograde transport of vesicles and organelles within eukaryotic cells via microtubules. Numerous studies have elucidated the step-size, velocities, forces, and navigation…
This fluid dynamics video presents three-dimensional kinetic simulations of the dynamics in suspensions of oxytactic bacteria confined in thin liquid film surrounded by air. At the initial time, the bacterial concentration is uniform and…
Cells are strongly out-of-equilibrium systems driven by continuous energy supply. They carry out many vital functions requiring active transport of various ingredients and organelles, some being small, others being large. The cytoskeleton,…