Related papers: Bacterial dimensions sensitively regulate surface …
The escape dynamics of sticky particles from textured surfaces is poorly understood despite importance to various scientific and technological domains. In this work, we address this challenge by investigating the escape time of adsorbates…
The run-and-tumble walk, consisting in randomly reoriented ballistic excursions, models phenomena ranging from gas kinetics to bacteria motility. We evaluate the mean time required for this walk to find a fixed target within a 2D or 3D…
Active Brownian motion with intermittent direction reversals are common in a class of bacteria like {\it Myxococcus xanthus} and {\it Pseudomonas putida}. We show that, for such a motion in two dimensions, the presence of the two time…
Highly concentrated active agents tend to exhibit turbulent flows, reminiscent of classical hydrodynamic turbulence, which has attracted considerable attention lately. Controlling the so-called active turbulence has long been a challenge,…
Insects like dragonflies and cicadas possess nanoprotusions on their wings that rupture bacterial membranes upon contact, inspiring synthetic antibacterial surfaces mimicking this phenomenon. Designing such biomimetic surfaces requires…
Bacteria possess diverse mechanisms to regulate their motility in response to environmental and physiological signals, enabling them to navigate complex habitats and adapt their behavior. Among these mechanisms, interspecies recognition…
We investigate the dynamics of the Fisher equation for the spreading of micro-organisms in one dimension subject to both turbulent convection and diffusion. We show that for strong enough turbulence, bacteria, for example, track in a…
Antimicrobial protocols - using substances such as antibiotics or disinfectants - remain the preferred option for preventing the spread of pathogenic bacteria. However, bacteria can develop mechanisms to reduce their antimicrobial…
Cell walls define a cell shape in bacteria. They are rigid to resist large internal pressures, but remarkably plastic to adapt to a wide range of external forces and geometric constraints. Currently, it is unknown how bacteria maintain…
Bacteria in bulk fluids swim collectively and display fascinating emergent dynamics. Although bacterial collective swimming in three-dimensional (3D) geometries has been well studied, its counterpart in confined two-dimensional (2D)…
Restrictions to molecular motion by barriers (membranes) are ubiquitous in biological tissues, porous media and composite materials. A major challenge is to characterize the microstructure of a material or an organism nondestructively using…
Bacterial cells exhibit a diverse array of shapes and sizes, largely governed by their cell walls in conjunction with cytoskeletal proteins and internal turgor pressure. The present study develops a theoretical framework for modeling the…
It has been shown that an anisotropic liquid crystalline (LC) environment can be used to guide the self-propulsion dynamics of dispersed microswimmers, such as bacteria. This type of composite system is named "living nematic" (LN). In the…
It has been shown that a nanoliter chamber separated by a wall of asymmetric obstacles can lead to an inhomogeneous distribution of self-propelled microorganisms. Although it is well established that this rectification effect arises from…
The capacity to sense gradients efficiently and acquire information about the ambient environment confers many advantages like facilitating movement toward nutrient sources or away from toxic chemicals. The amplified dispersal evinced by…
We propose a computational framework to study the growth and spread of bacterial biofilms on interfaces, as well as the action of antibiotics on them. Bacterial membranes are represented by boundaries immersed in a fluid matrix and subject…
Controlling and suppressing bacterial accumulation at solid surfaces is essential for preventing biofilm formation and biofouling. Whereas various chemical surface treatments are known to reduce cell accumulation and attachment, the role of…
Bacteria can spontaneously develop collective motions by aligning their motions in dense systems. Here, we show that bacteria can also respond collectively to an alternating electrical field and form dynamic clusters oscillating at the same…
The horizontal dynamics of a bouncing ball interacting with an irregular surface is investigated and is found to demonstrate behavior analogous to a random walk. Its stochastic character is substantiated by the calculation of a permutation…
Turbulent flows are observed in low-Reynolds active fluids. They are intrinsically different from the classical inertial turbulence and behave distinctively in two- and three-dimensions. Understanding the behaviors of this new type of…