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Bacteria commonly inhabit porous environments such as host tissues, soil, and marine sediments, where complex geometries constrain and redirect their motion. Although bacterial motility has been studied in porous media, the roles of cell…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-12-22 David Gao , Zeyuan Wang , Mihika Jain , Arnold J. T. M. Mathijssen , Ran Tao

The flagellated bacterium Escherichia coli is increasingly used experimentally as a self-propelled swimmer. To obtain meaningful, quantitative results that are comparable between different laboratories, reproducible protocols are needed to…

Microorganisms, such as bacteria and microalgae, often live in habitats consisting of a liquid phase and a plethora of interfaces. The precise ways in which these motile microbes behave in their confined environment remain unclear. Using…

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…

Biological Physics · Physics 2019-06-19 Haoran Xu , Justas Dauparas , Debasish Das , Eric Lauga , Yilin Wu

The locomotion of microorganisms and spermatozoa in complex viscoelastic fluids is of critical importance in many biological processes such as fertilization, infection, and biofilm formation. Depending on their propulsion mechanisms,…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2021-09-14 Gaojin Li , Eric Lauga , Arezoo M. Ardekani

Active flexible filaments form the classical continuum framework for modelling the locomotion of spermatozoa and algae driven by the periodic oscillation of flagella. This framework also applies to the locomotion of various artificial…

Biological Physics · Physics 2025-10-14 John Severn , Eric Lauga

While bacterial swimming has been well characterized in uniform liquid environments, only little is known about how bacteria propagate through complex environments, such as gel-like matrices or porous media that are typically encountered in…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2024-08-06 Agniva Datta , Sönke Beier , Veronika Pfeifer , Robert Großmann , Carsten Beta

Diverse processes--e.g. bioremediation, biofertilization, and microbial drug delivery--rely on bacterial migration in disordered, three-dimensional (3D) porous media. However, how pore-scale confinement alters bacterial motility is unknown…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2019-05-09 Tapomoy Bhattacharjee , Sujit S. Datta

The hydrodynamic flow field generated by self-propelled active particles and swimming microorganisms is strongly altered by the presence of nearby boundaries in a viscous flow. Using a simple model three-linked sphere swimmer, we show that…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2018-04-18 Abdallah Daddi-Moussa-Ider , Maciej Lisicki , Christian Hoell , Hartmut Löwen

Swimming of microorganisms is studied from a viewpoint of extended objects (strings and membranes) swimming in the incompressible f luid of low Reynolds number. The flagellated motion is analyzed in two dimensional fluid, by using the…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2009-10-22 Masako Kawamura , Akio Sugamoto , Shin'ichi Nojiri

In the present work we simulate the basic two-dimensional dynamics of swarming E. coli bacteria on the surface of a moderately soft agar plate. Individual bacteria are modelled by self-propelled ridged bodies (agents), which interact with…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2016-12-31 David Hansmann , Guido Fier , Rubén Carlos Buceta

Low Reynolds number swimmers frequently move near boundaries, such as spirochetes moving through porous tissues and sperm navigating the reproductive tract. Furthermore, these microorganisms must often navigate non-Newtonian fluids such as…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2023-11-10 D. Gagnon , B. Thomases , R. D. Guy , P. E. Arratia

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…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2022-04-12 Ehsan Irani , Zahra Mokhtari , Annette Zippelius

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,…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2019-11-14 Avraham Be`er , Bella Ilkanaiv , Renan Gross , Daniel B. Kearns , Sebastian Heidenreich , Markus Bär , Gil Ariel

Thiovulum majus, which is one of the fastest known bacteria, swims using hundreds of flagella. Unlike typical pusher cells, which swim in circular paths over hard surfaces, a T. majus cell turns its flagella normal to the surface. To probe…

Biological Physics · Physics 2023-06-21 Alexander P Petroff , Schuyler McDonough

Self-organized dynamic patterns in dense active matter are striking manifestations of non-equilibrium physics. A prominent example is the macroscopic elliptical motion observed in quasi-2D bacterial suspensions, which has lacked a physical…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2026-03-30 Bing Miao , Lei-Han Tang

The acoustofluidic method holds great promise for manipulating microorganisms. When exposed to the steady vortex structures of acoustic streaming flow, these microorganisms exhibit intriguing dynamic behaviors, such as hydrodynamic trapping…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2025-04-25 Xuyang Sun , Wenchang Tan , Yi Man

In a multitude of life's processes, cilia and flagella are found indispensable. Recently, the biflagellated chlorophyte alga Chlamydomonas has become a model organism for the study of ciliary coordination and synchronization. Here, we use…

Biological Physics · Physics 2014-02-28 Kirsty Y. Wan , Kyriacos C. Leptos , Raymond E. Goldstein

Self-propelled bacteria are marvels of nature with a potential to power dynamic materials and microsystems of the future. The challenge is in commanding their chaotic behavior. By dispersing swimming Bacillus subtilis in a…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2016-12-21 Chenhui Peng , Taras Turiv , Yubing Guo , Qi-Huo Wei , Oleg D. Lavrentovich

Many microorganisms swim through gels and non-Newtonian fluids in their natural environments. In this paper, we focus on microorganisms which use flagella for propulsion. We address how swimming velocities are affected in nonlinearly…

Biological Physics · Physics 2010-04-07 Henry C. Fu , Charles W. Wolgemuth , Thomas R. Powers