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Key to collective cell migration is the ability of cells to rearrange their position with respect to their neighbors. Recent theory and experiments demonstrated that cellular rearrangements are facilitated by cell shape, with cells having…
Transport phenomena of microswimmers in fluid flows play a crucial role in various biological processes, including bioconvection and cell sorting. In this paper, we investigate the dispersion behavior of chiral microswimmers in a simple…
In densely-packed two-dimensional systems of growing cells, such as rod-shaped bacteria, a number of experimental and numerical studies report distinct patterns of nematic orientational order in the presence of confinement. So far, these…
The dynamics of a quasi two-dimensional isotropic droplet in a cholesteric liquid crystal medium under symmetric shear flow is studied by lattice Boltzmann simulations. We consider a geometry in which the flow direction is along the axis of…
The present study investigated the flow birefringence induced by shear components along a camera's optical axis, which has been neglected in conventional theories of photoelastic measurements. Measurements were conducted for a wide range of…
Real-life bacteria often swim in complex fluids, but our understanding of the interactions between bacteria and complex surroundings is still evolving. In this work, rod-like \textit{Bacillus subtilis} swims in a quasi-2D environment with…
In this fluid mechanics video, we explore the kinematics of chemotaxing sperm cells (sea urchin, \textit{Arbacia punctulata}) swimming in a chemoattractant gradient. We demonstrate that the complex swimming trajectories resulting in…
Using velocity profile measurements based on dynamic light scattering and coupled to structural and rheological measurements in a Couette cell, we present evidences for a shear-banding scenario in the shear flow of the onion texture of a…
Many animal cells change their shape depending on the stiffness of the substrate on which they are cultured: they assume small, rounded shapes in soft ECMs, they elongate within stiffer ECMs, and flatten out on hard substrates. Cells tend…
We investigate the positional behavior of a single bacterium confined within a vesicle by measuring the probability of locating the bacterium at a certain distance from the vesicle boundary. We observe that the distribution is…
The twisting and writhing of a cell body and associated mechanical stresses is an underappreciated constraint on microbial self-propulsion. Multi-flagellated bacteria can even buckle and writhe under their own activity as they swim through…
Directed growth, anisotropic cell shapes, and confinement drive self-organization in multicellular systems. We investigate the influence of particle shape on the distribution and dynamics of nematic microdomains in a minimal in-silico model…
Crawling cell motility is vital to many biological processes such as wound healing and the immune response. Using a minimal model we investigate the effects of patterned substrate adhesiveness and biophysical cell parameters on the…
Guiding active motion is important for targeted delivery, sensing, and search tasks. Many active systems exhibit circular swimming, ubiquitous in chemical, physical, and biological systems, that biases motion and reduces transport…
We present a simple model to account for the rheological behavior observed in recent experiments on micellar gels. The model combines attachment-detachment kinetics with stretching due to shear, and shows well-defined jammed and flowing…
Gyrotactic algae are bottom heavy, motile cells whose swimming direction is determined by a balance between a buoyancy torque directing them upwards and fluid velocity gradients. Gyrotaxis has, in recent years, become a paradigmatic model…
Large optical chirality in the vicinity of achiral high index dielectric nanostructures has been recently demonstrated as useful means of enhancing molecular circular dichroism. We theoretically study the spatial dependence of optical…
Directional growth caused by gravitropism and corresponding bending of plant cells has been explored since 19th century, however, many aspects of mechanisms underlying the perception of gravity at the molecular level are still not well…
Molecular chirality leads to a wonderful variety of equilibrium structures, from the simple cholesteric phase to the twist-grain-boundary phases, and it is responsible for interesting and technologically important materials like…
Rigidity transitions in simple models of confluent cells have been a powerful organizing principle in understanding the dynamics and mechanics of dense biological tissue. In this work we explore the interplay between geometry and rigidity…