Related papers: Hydrodynamic mechanism for stable spindle position…
The mitotic spindle lies at the heart of the spatio-temporal control over cellular components during cell division. The spindle consists of microtubules, which are not only crosslinked by motor proteins but also by passive binding proteins.…
We study the dynamics of membrane vesicle motor transport into dendritic spines, which are bulbous intracellular compartments in neurons that play a key role in transmitting signals between neurons. We consider the stochastic analog of the…
Spatial distributions of morphogens provide positional information in developing systems, but how the distributions are established and maintained remains an open problem. Transport by diffusion has been the traditional mechanism, but…
Eukaryotic cell motility is crucial during development, wound healing, the immune response, and cancer metastasis. Some eukaryotic cells can swim, but cells more commonly adhere to and crawl along the extracellular matrix. We study the…
Fish rheotaxis, or alignment into flow currents, results from intertwined sensory, neural and actuation mechanisms, all coupled with hydrodynamics to produce a behavior that is critical for upstream migration and position holding in…
Using computational modelling, we investigate mechanisms of signal transduction focusing on the spindle assembly checkpoint where a single unattached kinetochore is able to signal to prevent cell cycle progression. This inhibitory signal…
We have characterized the two-dimensional spatial dependence of the hydrodynamic interactions between two adhesively rolling leukocytes in a live venule in the mouse cremaster muscle. Two rolling leukocytes were observed to slow each other…
The motility of a fish keratocyte on a flat substrate exhibits two distinct regimes: the non-migrating and the migrating one. In both configurations the shape is fixed in time and, when the cell is moving, the velocity is constant in…
The aim of this work is to quantify the spatio-temporal dynamics of flow-driven amoeboid locomotion in small ($\sim$100 $\mu$m) fragments of the true slime mold \phys {\it polycephalum}. In this model organism, cellular contraction drives…
This work is motivated by the interest in determining the effect of the micro-anatomy of the spinal subarachnoid space on the cerebrospinal fluid flow and on the associated transport of solutes. To that aim, we focus on a canonical model…
Complex fluids flow in complex ways in complex structures. Transport of water and various organic and inorganic molecules in the central nervous system are important in a wide range of biological and medical processes [C. Nicholson, and S.…
Biological microswimmers are known to navigate upstream of an external flow (positive rheotaxis) in trajectories ranging from linear, spiral to oscillatory. Such rheotaxis stems from the interplay between the motion and complex shapes of…
Recent experiments on active materials, such as dense bacterial suspensions and microtubule-kinesin motor mixtures, show a promising potential for achieving self-sustained flows. However, to develop active microfluidics it is necessary to…
In this fluid dynamics video we explore the nature and causes of the spontaneous ordering that emerges in a dense bacterial suspension under confinement. Recent experiments with B. Subtilis confined within small flattened drops show that…
The hydrodynamic stresses created by active particles can destabilise orientational order present in the system. This is manifested, for example, by the appearance of a bend instability in active nematics or in quasi-2-dimensional living…
Sperm swimming at low Reynolds number have strong hydrodynamic interactions when their concentration is high in vivo or near substrates in vitro. The beating tails not only propel the sperm through a fluid, but also create flow fields…
Thin fluid or elastic films and membranes are found in nature and technology, for instance, as confinements of living cells or in loudspeakers. When applying a net force, resulting flows in an unbounded two-dimensional incompressible…
The motility mechanism of certain rod-shaped bacteria has long been a mystery, since no external appendages are involved in their motion which is known as gliding. However, the physical principles behind gliding motility still remain poorly…
We study here the curious particle dynamics resulting from electro-osmotic flow around a microchannel junction corner whose dielectric walls are weakly polarizable. The hydrodynamic velocity field is obtained via superposition of a linear…
The myelinated axons are widely present in both central and peripheral nervous systems. Its unique compact spiraling structure poses significant challenges to understanding its biological functions and developmental mechanisms.…