Related papers: Biofilm mechanics and patterns
With exquisite precision and reproducibility, cells orchestrate the cooperative action of thousands of nanometer-sized molecular motors to carry out mechanical tasks at much larger length scales, such as cell motility, division and…
Most motile bacteria swim in viscous fluids by rotating multiple helical flagellar filaments. These semi-rigid filaments repeatedly join ('bundle') and separate ('unbundle'), resulting in a two-gait random walk-like motion of the cell. In…
Two phase solid-fluid mixture models are ubiquitous in biological applications. For instance, models for growth of tissues and biofilms combine time dependent and quasi-stationary boundary value problems set in domains whose boundary moves…
In binary mixtures, the lifetimes of surface bubbles can be five orders of magnitude longer than those in pure liquids because of slightly different compositions of the bulk and the surfaces, leading to a thickness-dependent surface tension…
Mechanical forces such as fluid shear have been shown to enhance cell growth and differentiation, but knowledge of their mechanistic effect on cells is limited because the local flow patterns and associated metrics are not precisely known.…
To model the morphogenesis of rod-shaped bacterial micro-colony, several individual-based models have been proposed in the biophysical literature. When studying the shape of micro-colonies, most models present interaction forces such as…
In the growth of bacterial colonies, a great variety of complex patterns are observed in experiments, depending on external conditions and the bacterial species. Typically, existing models employ systems of reaction-diffusion equations or…
Biological systems excel at building spatial structures on scales ranging from nanometers to kilometers and exhibit temporal patterning from milliseconds to years. One approach that nature has taken to accomplish this relies on the…
Biomembranes consisting of two opposing phospholipid monolayers, which comprise the so-called lipid bilayer, are largely responsible for the dual solid-fluid behavior of individual cells and viruses. Quantifying the mechanical…
Biological cells in soft materials can be modeled as anisotropic force contraction dipoles. The corresponding elastic interaction potentials are long-ranged ($\sim 1/r^3$ with distance $r$) and depend sensitively on elastic constants,…
Bacteria are prolific at colonizing diverse surfaces under a widerange of environmental conditions, and exhibit fascinating examples of self-organization across scales. Though it has recently attracted considerable interest, the role of…
Biomolecular condensates are formed via liquid-liquid phase separation of proteins, often together with nucleic acids, typically driven by interactions between low-affinity binding sites. The computational study of such condensates that…
Self-propulsion and navigation due to the sensing of environmental conditions - such as durotaxis and chemotaxis - are remarkable properties of biological cells that cannot be reproduced by single-component self-propelled particles. We…
Many active systems are capable of forming intriguing patterns at scales significantly larger than the size of their individual constituents. Cyanobacteria are one of the most ancient and important phyla of organisms that has allowed the…
Bacterial assemblies exhibit rich collective behaviors that control their biological functions, making them a relevant object of study from an active matter physics perspective. Dense bacterial suspensions self-organize into distinct…
The shape of materials is often subject to a number of geometric constraints that limit the size of the system or fix the structure of its boundary. In soft and biological materials, however, these constraints are not always hard, but are…
Theoretical understanding of evolutionary dynamics in spatially structured populations often relies on non-spatial models. Biofilms are among such populations where a more accurate understanding is of theoretical interest and can reveal new…
Living systems are capable of locomotion, reconfiguration, and replication. To perform these tasks, cells spatiotemporally coordinate the interactions of force-generating, "active" molecules that create and manipulate non-equilibrium…
Thin films, bubbles and membranes are central to numerous natural and engineering processes, i.e., in thin-film solar cells, coatings, biosensors, electrowetting displays, foams, and emulsions. Yet, the characterization and an adequate…
Propagating spiral waves have been discovered in various chemical, biological and physical systems. Spiral waves in multicellular organisms are often associated with essential living functions. Although certain eukaryotic microorganisms…