Related papers: Nutrient Transport in Concentration Gradients
Ciliated microorganisms near the base of the aquatic food chain either swim to encounter prey or attach at a substrate and generate feeding currents to capture passing particles. Here, we represent attached and swimming ciliates using a…
We demonstrate that active carpets of bacteria or self-propelled colloids generate coherent flows towards the substrate, and propose that these currents provide efficient pathways to replenish nutrients that feed back into activity. A full…
Through switching contraction patterns driving digestive flows, the small intestine balances nutrient uptake and waste removal. Complex segmentation contraction patterns are associated with higher nutrient uptake, while peristaltic…
Sessile drying droplets in various bio-relevant systems, encompassing passive bio-colloids like DNA, proteins, and blood to active microbes, gain considerable attention due to intricate interplay among different convective flows, droplet…
To explore the coupling between a growing population of microorganisms such as E. coli and a nonuniform nutrient distribution, we formulate a minimalistic model. It consists of active Brownian particles that divide and grow at a…
This work examines the relevance of the one-dimensional models used to study the influx and the cumulative uptake of nutrient by roots. The physical models studied are the fixed boundary model (Barber and Cushman 1981) and an improved…
Cellular nutrient consumption is influenced by both the nutrient uptake kinetics of an individual cell and the cells' spatial arrangement. Large cell clusters or colonies have inhibited growth at the cluster's center due to the shielding of…
Many types of cells are able to accurately sense shallow gradients of chemicals across their diameters, allowing the cells to move towards or away from chemical sources. This chemotactic ability relies on the remarkable capacity of cells to…
Cells swimming in viscous fluids create flow fields which influence the transport of relevant nutrients, and therefore their feeding rate. We propose a modeling approach to the problem of optimal feeding at zero Reynolds number. We consider…
The flow field created by swimming microorganisms not only enables their locomotion but also leads to advective transport of nutrients. In this paper we address analytically and computationally the link between unsteady feeding and unsteady…
Cell colonies of bacteria, tumour cells and fungi, under nutrient limited growth conditions, exhibit complex branched growth patterns. In order to investigate this phenomenon we present a simple hybrid cellular automaton model of cell…
Nutrient gradients and limitations play a pivotal role in the life of all microbes, both in their natural habitat as well as in artificial, microfluidic systems. Spatial concentration gradients of nutrients in densely packed cell…
In the subtropical gyres, phytoplankton rely on eddies for transporting nutrients from depth to the euphotic zone. But, what controls the rate of nutrient supply for new production? We show that vertical nutrient flux depends both on the…
A generic flow distribution network typically does not deliver its load at a uniform rate across a service area, instead oversupplying regions near the nutrient source while leaving downstream regions undersupplied. In this work we…
Food production needs to increase significantly in 30 years, and water loss from plants may hold one key, especially relevant in a time of climate change. The plant leaf cuticle is the final defence of leaves in drought and at night, and so…
High-throughput experimental techniques and bioinformatics tools make it possible to obtain reconstructions of the metabolism of microbial species. Combined with mathematical frameworks such as flux balance analysis, which assumes that…
Biological transport networks are highly optimized structures that ensure power-efficient distribution of fluids across various domains, including animal vasculature and plant venation. Theoretically, these networks can be described as…
Ciliary flows are generated by a vast array of eukaryotic organisms, from unicellular algae to mammals, and occur in a range of different geometrical configurations. We employ a point torque -- or `rotlet' -- model to capture the…
Highly-optimized complex transport networks serve crucial functions in many man-made and natural systems such as power grids and plant or animal vasculature. Often, the relevant optimization functional is non-convex and characterized by…
Advances in remote sensing technology have led to the capture of massive amounts of data. Increased image resolution, more frequent revisit times, and additional spectral channels have created an explosion in the amount of data that is…