Related papers: Active random force promotes diffusion in bacteria…
A solvable model is proposed and analyzed to reveal the mechanism underlying the diffusion enhancement recently reported for a model of molecular motors and predicted to be observed in the biological rotary motor $\rm F_1$-ATPase. It turns…
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…
Understanding the system level adaptive changes taking place in an organism in response to variations in the environment is a key issue of contemporary biology. Current modeling approaches such as the constraint-based flux balance analyses…
Living cells are known to generate non-Gaussian active fluctuations significantly larger than thermal fluctuations owing to various active processes. Understanding the effect of these active fluctuations on various physicochemical…
In vitro velocities of several cell types have been measured using computer controlled video microscopy, which allowed to record the cells' trajectories over several days. On the basis of our large data sets we show that the locomotion…
We numerically study the dynamics and the phases of self-propelled disk-shaped particles of different sizes with soft repulsive potential in two dimensions. Size diversity is introduced by the polydispersity index (PDI) $\epsilon$, which is…
Mesoscopic active systems exhibit various unique behaviours - absent in passive systems - due to the forces generated by the corresponding constituents by converting their available free energies. However, estimating these forces - which…
It has recently been reported that bacteria, such as E.coli and P. putida, perform distinct modes of motion when placed in porous media as compared to dilute regions or free space. This has led us to suggest an efficient strategy for active…
Quantitative single cell measurements have shown that cell cycle duration (the time between cell divisions) for diverse cell types is a noisy variable. The underlying distribution is mean scalable with a universal shape for many cell types…
Bacterial cells exhibit a diverse array of shapes and sizes, largely governed by their cell walls in conjunction with cytoskeletal proteins and internal turgor pressure. The present study develops a theoretical framework for modeling the…
Inside every living cell is the cytoplasm: a fluid mixture of thousands of different macromolecules, predominantly proteins. This mixture is where most of the biochemistry occurs that enables living cells to function, and it is perhaps the…
We demonstrate 'differential dynamic microscopy' (DDM) for the fast, high throughput characterization of the dynamics of active particles. Specifically, we characterize the swimming speed distribution and the fraction of motile cells in…
The importance of molecular-scale forces in sculpting biological form and function has been acknowledged for more than a century. Accounting for forces in biology is a problem that lies at the intersection of soft condensed matter physics,…
We study the clustering of a model cyanobacterium \textit{Synechocystis} into microcolonies. The bacteria are allowed to diffuse onto surfaces of different hardness, and interact with the others by aggregation and detachment. We find that…
Proliferation is a defining feature of life. Through growth, division, and death, living systems consume energy and inject mass, breaking conservation laws and driving collective phenomena from biofilm formation to embryonic development.…
The study of the interactions of living adherent cells with mechanically stable (visco)elastic materials enables understanding and exploiting physiological phenomena mediated by cell-extracellular communication. However, insight on the…
In this work we approach cell migration under a large-scale assumption, so that the system reduces to a particle in motion. Unlike classical particle models, the cell displacement results from its internal activity: the cell velocity is a…
Evidence suggests that the transport rate of a passive particle at long timescales is enhanced due to interactions with the surrounding active ones in a size- and composition-dependent manner. Using a system of particles with different…
We analyze the dynamics of particles in two dimensions with constant speed and a stochastic switching angle dynamics defined by a correlated dichotomous Markov process (telegraph noise) plus Gaussian white noise. We study various cases of…
Bacterial processes ranging from gene expression to motility and biofilm formation are constantly challenged by internal and external noise. While the importance of stochastic fluctuations has been appreciated for chemotaxis, it is…