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Within microcentrifuge devices, a microfluidic vortex separates larger particles from a heterogeneous suspension using inertial migration, a phenomenon that causes particles to migrate across streamlines. The ability to selectively capture…
Recent advances in microscopy techniques has uncovered unique aspects of flagella-driven motility in bacteria. A remarkable example is the discovery of flagellar wrapping, a phenomenon whereby a bacterium wraps its flagellum (or flagellar…
Turbulence is ubiquitous, from oceanic currents to small-scale biological and quantum systems. Self-sustained turbulent motion in microbial suspensions presents an intriguing example of collective dynamical behavior amongst the simplest…
We study the motion of an elastic capsule through a microchannel characterized by a localized constriction. We consider a capsule with a stress-free spherical shape and impose its steady state configuration in an infinitely long straight…
Biofilms are spatially organized microorganism colonies embedded in a self-produced matrix, conferring to the microbial community resistance to environmental stresses. Motile bacteria have been observed swimming in the matrix of pathogenic…
Many biological microswimmers locomote by periodically beating the densely-packed cilia on their cell surface in a wave-like fashion. While the swimming mechanisms of ciliated microswimmers have been extensively studied both from the…
Many living and physical systems such as cell aggregates, tissues or bacterial colonies behave as unconventional systems of particles that are strongly constrained by volume exclusion and shape interactions. Understanding how these…
In this work we introduce a stochastic model to describe directional changes in the movement of swimming bacteria. We use the probability density function (PDF) of turn angles, measured on tumbling wild-type {\it E. coli}, to build a…
Microorganisms naturally move in microstructured fluids. Using the simulation method of multi-particle collision dynamics, we study an undulatory Taylor line swimming in a two-dimensional microchannel and in a cubic lattice of obstacles,…
This paper presents experimental results about transport of dilute suspensions of nano-objects in silicon-glass micrometric and sub-micrometric channels. Two kinds of objects are used: solid, rigid latex beads and spherical capsule-shaped,…
The interaction between swimming microorganisms or artificial self-propelled colloids and passive (tracer) particles in a fluid leads to enhanced diffusion of the tracers. This enhancement has attracted strong interest, as it could lead to…
In this paper we study the two dimensional motion of three linked rigid bodies moving through a fluid. The bodies change their orientation relative to each other in a way which mimics the swimming of fish. In contrast to previous…
Many biological fluids are composed of suspended polymers immersed in a viscous fluid. A prime example is mucus, where the polymers are also known to form a network. While the presence of this microstructure is linked with an overall…
Many microorganisms swim in a highly heterogeneous environment with obstacles such as fibers or polymers. To better understand how this environment affects microorganism swimming, we study propulsion of a cylinder or filament in a fluid…
The accumulation of swimming bacteria near surfaces may lead to biological processes such as biofilm formation and wound infection. Previous experimental observations of Vibrio alginolyticus showed an interesting correlation between the…
Microorganisms are rarely found in Nature swimming freely in an unbounded fluid. Instead, they typically encounter other organisms, hard walls, or deformable boundaries such as free interfaces or membranes. Hydrodynamic interactions between…
In animals, gas exchange between blood and tissues occurs in narrow vessels, whose diameter is comparable to that of a red blood cell. Red blood cells must deform to squeeze through these narrow vessels, transiently blocking or occluding…
In tissues as diverse as amphibian skin and the human airway, the cilia that propel fluid are grouped in sparsely distributed multiciliated cells (MCCs). We investigate fluid transport in this "mosaic" architecture, with emphasis on the…
The time dynamics of flagellar and ciliary beating is often neglected in theories of microswimmers, with the most common models prescribing a time-constant actuation of the surrounding fluid. By explicitly introducing a metachronal wave,…
We use the boundary element method to study the low-Reynolds number locomotion of a spherical model microorganism in a circular tube. The swimmer propels itself by tangen- tial or normal surface motion in a tube whose radius is on the order…