Related papers: Decision-making in light-trapped slime molds invol…
Movement is a fundamental behaviour of organisms that brings about beneficial encounters with resources and mates, but at the same time exposes the organism to dangerous encounters with predators. The movement patterns adopted by organisms…
The motility of eukaryotic cells is strongly influenced by their environment, with confined cells often developing qualitatively different motility patterns from those migrating on simple two-dimensional substrates. Recent experiments,…
We study a model of contraction-based cell motility inside a microchannel to investigate the regulation of cell polarization and motion by the mechanical resistance of the environment. A positive feedback between the asymmetry of the…
The motility skills of phytoplankton have evolved and persisted over millions of years, primarily in response to factors such as nutrient and light availability, temperature and viscosity gradients, turbulence, and predation pressure.…
Active agents - like phoretic particles, bacteria, sperm, and cytoskeletal filaments in motility assays - show a large variety of motility-induced collective behaviors, such as aggregation, clustering and phase separation. The behavior of…
A theoretical model is presented for early evolutionary cell sorting within cellular aggregates. The model involves an energy-saving mechanism and principles of collective self-organization analogous to those observed in bicycle pelotons…
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…
Fluid-resistance limited transport of vesicles through narrow constrictions is a recurring theme in many biological and engineering applications. Inspired by the motor-driven movement of soft membrane-bound vesicles into closed neuronal…
Living creatures exhibit a remarkable diversity of locomotion mechanisms, evolving structures specialised for interacting with their environment. In the vast majority of cases, locomotor behaviours such as flying, crawling, and running, are…
Molecular motors perform active movements along cytoskeletal filaments and drive the traffic of organelles and other cargo particles in cells. In contrast to the macroscopic traffic of cars, however, the traffic of molecular motors is…
In this demo, we present a novel technique for approximating topologically optimal scaffoldings for 3D printed objects using a Monte Carlo algorithm based on the foraging behavior of the Physarum polycephalum slime mold. As a case study, we…
Based on symmetry consideration of migration and shape deformations, we formulate phenomenologically the dynamics of cell crawling in two dimensions. Forces are introduced to change the cell shape. The shape deformations induce migration of…
Some euglenids, a family of aquatic unicellular organisms, can develop highly concerted, large-amplitude peristaltic body deformations. This remarkable behaviour has been known for centuries. Yet, its function remains controversial, and is…
Space-saving design is a requirement that is encountered in biological systems and the development of modern technological devices alike. Many living organisms dynamically pack their polymer chains, filaments or membranes inside of…
Bacteria organize in a variety of collective states, from swarming, which has been attributed to rapid surface exploration, to biofilms, which are highly dense immobile communities attributed to stress resistance. It has been suggested that…
A number of factors, such as, cell-cell interactions and self-propulsion of cells driven by cytoskeletal forces determine tissue morphologies and dynamics. To explore the interplay between these factors in controlling the dynamics at the…
We provide evidence that plastic depinning falls into the same class of phenomena as the random organization which was recently studied in periodically driven particle systems [L. Corte et al., Nature Phys. 4, 420 (2008)]. In the plastic…
We model an enclosed system of bacteria, whose motility-induced phase separation is coupled to slow population dynamics. Without noise, the system shows both static phase separation and a limit cycle, in which a rising global population…
We consider the driven dynamics of a probe particle moving through an assembly of particles with competing long-range repulsive and short-range attractive interactions, which form crystal, stripe, labyrinth, and bubble states as the ratio…
Cells contain elaborate and interconnected networks of protein polymers which make up the cytoskeleton. The cytoskeleton governs the internal positioning and movement of vesicles and organelles, and controls dynamic changes in cell…