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Self-propulsion of cellular microswimmers generates flow signatures, commonly classified as pusher- and puller-type, which characterize hydrodynamic interactions with other cells or boundaries. Using experimentally measured beat patterns,…
Suspensions of unicellular microswimmers such as flagellated bacteria or motile algae exhibit spontaneous density heterogeneities at large enough concentrations. Based on the relative location of the biological actuation appendages i.e.…
Interactions between swimming cells and surfaces are essential to many microbiological processes, from bacterial biofilm formation to human fertilization. However, in spite of their fundamental importance, relatively little is known about…
Motile bacteria play essential roles in biology that rely on their dynamic behaviors, including their ability to navigate, interact, and self-organize. However, bacteria dynamics on fluid interfaces are not well understood. Swimmers…
Interactions between microorganisms and solid boundaries play an important role in biological processes, like egg fertilisation, biofilm formation and soil colonisation, where microswimmers move within a structured environment. Despite…
Microswimmers are active particles of microscopic size that self-propel by setting the surrounding fluid into motion. According to the kind of far-field fluid flow that they induce, they are classified into pushers and pullers. Many studies…
Locomotion and transport of microorganisms in fluids is an essential aspect of life. Search for food, orientation toward light, spreading of off-spring, and the formation of colonies are only possible due to locomotion. Swimming at the…
Biological microswimmers such as bacteria and sperm cells often encounter complex biological fluid environments. Here we use the well-known squirmer microswimmer model to show the importance of the local fluid microstructure and…
Enhanced diffusion of passive tracers immersed in active fluids is a universal feature of active fluids and has been extensively studied in recent years. Similar to microrheology for equilibrium complex fluids, the unusual enhanced particle…
Many microorganisms live and evolve in complex fluids. Examples include mammalian spermatozoa in cervical mucus, worms (e.g., \textit{C. elegans}) in wet soil, and bacteria (e.g., \textit{H. pylori}) in our stomach lining. Due to the…
We explore the mechanism underlying the anomalous rheology of puller-type microswimmer suspensions through direct hydrodynamic simulations. Puller-type swimmers generate contractile flow fields along their swimming direction, leading to…
Deformable boundaries are omnipresent in the habitats of swimming microorganisms, leading to intricate hydroelastic couplings. Employing a perturbation theory, valid for small deformations, we study the swimming dynamics of pushers and…
In their search for metabolic resources microbes swim through viscous environments that present physical anisotropies, including steric obstacles across a wide range of sizes. Hydrodynamic forces are known to significantly alter swimmer…
We study the coupled hydrodynamics between a motile slender microswimmer and a deformable interface that separates two Newtonian fluid regions. From the disturbance field generated by the swimming motion, we quantitatively characterize the…
Few simulations exist for microswimmers near deformable interfaces. Here, we present numerical simulations of the hydrodynamic flows associated with a single microswimmer embedded in a binary fluid mixture. The two fluids demix, separated…
The motility of microorganisms is influenced greatly by their hydrodynamic interactions with the fluidic environment they inhabit. We show by direct experimental observation of the bi-flagellated alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii that fluid…
Systems of motile microorganisms exhibit a multitude of collective phenomena, including motility-induced phase separation and turbulence. Sensing of the environment and adaptation of movement plays an essential role in the emergent…
Suspensions of motile cells are model systems for understanding the unique mechanical properties of living materials which often consist of ensembles of self-propelled particles. We present here a quantitative comparison of theory against…
Microorganisms navigate through fluid, often confined by complex environments, to survive and sustain life. Inspired by this fact, we consider a model system and seek to understand the wall curvature driven dynamics of a squirmer, a…
Unicellular microscopic organisms living in aqueous environments outnumber all other creatures on Earth. A large proportion of them are able to self-propel in fluids with a vast diversity of swimming gaits and motility patterns. In this…