Related papers: Algae-like Artificial Organic Phototactic Micro-sw…
Many motile microorganisms react to environmental light cues with a variety of motility responses guiding cells towards better conditions for survival and growth. The use of spatial light modulators could help to elucidate the mechanisms of…
Flocks of birds, schools of fish, mixtures of motors and cytoskeletal filaments, swimming bacteria and driven granular media are systems of interacting motile units that exhibit collective behaviour. These can all be described as active…
We use moving light patterns to control the motion of {\it Escherichia coli} bacteria whose motility is photo-activated. Varying the pattern speed controls the magnitude and direction of the bacterial flux, and therefore the accumulation of…
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…
Ciliated microswimmers and flagellated bacteria alter their swimming trajectories to follow the direction of an applied electric field exhibiting electrotaxis. Both for matters of application and physical modelling, it is instructive to…
Various microorganisms and some mammalian cells are able to swim in viscous fluids by performing nonreciprocal body deformations, such as rotating attached flagella or by distorting their entire body. In order to perform chemotaxis, i.e. to…
Recent advancements in active colloidal systems aim to mimic key characteristics of biological microswimmers, particularly their adaptive motility in response to environmental changes. While many approaches rely on externally imposing a…
Active particles such as swimming bacteria or self-propelled colloids are known to spontaneously organize into fascinating large-scale dynamic structures. The emergence of these collective states from the motility pattern of the individual…
Biological tissues have been observed to display emergent fluid-like properties, owing to physical interactions between cells. However, it remains unclear in general how these fluid-like properties affect tissue structure and function.…
One of the most ancient forms of life dating to ~3.5 billion years ago, cyanobacteria are highly abundant organisms that convert light into energy and motion, often within conjoined filaments and larger colonies. We study how gradients of…
The creation of synthetic systems that emulate the defining properties of living matter, such as motility, gradient-sensing, signalling and replication, is a grand challenge of biomimetics. Such imitations of life crucially contain active…
Active fluids can develop spontaneous flow instabilities and complex patterns. However, spatio-temporal control of active particles has remained challenging, despite its relevance in biological and applied contexts. Here, we harnessed…
We study the effect of inhomogeneous environments on the swimming direction of the microalgae \textit{Chlamydomonas Reinhardtii} (CR) in the presence of a light stimulus. Positive or negative phototaxis describe the ability of…
Collective motion of self-propelled organisms or synthetic particles often termed active fluid has attracted enormous attention in broad scientific community because of it fundamentally non-equilibrium nature. Energy input and interactions…
Many fascinating properties of biological active matter crucially depend on the capacity of constituting entities to perform directed motion, e.g., molecular motors transporting vesicles inside cells or bacteria searching for food. While…
Natural habitats of most living microorganisms are distinguished by a complex structure often formed by a porous medium such as soil. The dynamics and transport properties of motile microorganisms are strongly affected by crowded and…
Artificial soft matter systems have appeared as important tools to harness mechanical motion for microscale manipulation. Typically, this motion is driven either by the external fields or by mutual interaction between the colloids. In the…
Cilia and flagella in biological systems often show large scale cooperative behaviors such as the synchronization of their beats in "metachronal waves". These are beautiful examples of emergent dynamics in biology, and are essential for…
Active systems comprising micron-sized self-propelling units, also termed microswimmers, are promising candidates for the bottom-up assembly of small structures and reconfigurable materials. Here we leverage field-driven colloidal assembly…
Biofilms are spatially organized microorganism colonies embedded in a self-produced matrix, conferring to the microbial community resistance to environmental stresses. Motile bacteria have been observed swimming in the matrix of pathogenic…