Related papers: Phototactic Decision-Making by Micro-Algae
Flagella allow eukaryotic cells to move and pump fluid. We present the first three-dimensional, time-resolved imaging of the flagellar waveform of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a model alga found in fresh water. During the power stroke, we…
Various microorganisms and some mammalian cells are able to swim in viscous fluids by performing nonreciprocal body deformations, such as rotating attached flagella or by distorting their entire body. In order to perform chemotaxis, i.e. to…
The recent interest in using microorganisms for biofuels is motivation enough to study bioconvection and cell dispersion in tubes subject to imposed flow. To optimize light and nutrient uptake, many microorganisms swim in directions biased…
Many biological microswimmers can modulate their swimming gait to achieve directional control of motility, especially when performing steering towards specific directional cues. This can be achieved without the need for obvious…
Microbial colonization of surfaces represents the first step towards biofilm formation, which is a recurring phenomenon in nature with beneficial and detrimental implications in technological and medical settings. Consequently, there is a…
Active particles (living or synthetic) often move through inhomogeneous environments, such as gradients in light, heat or nutrient concentration, that can lead to directed motion (or taxis). Recent research has explored inhomogeneity in the…
In the past decade the volvocine green algae, spanning from the unicellular $Chlamydomonas$ to multicellular $Volvox$, have emerged as model organisms for a number of problems in biological fluid dynamics. These include flagellar…
Swimming at a micrometer scale demands particular strategies. Indeed when inertia is negligible as compared to viscous forces (i.e. Reynolds number $Re$ is lower than unity), hydrodynamics equations are reversible in time. To achieve…
We explore in this paper the phenomenon of photofocusing: a coupling between flow vorticity and biased swimming of microalgae toward a light source that produces a focusing of the microswimmer suspension. We combine experiments that…
The unicellular green algae Chlamydomonas swims with two flagella, which can synchronize their beat. Synchronized beating is required to swim both fast and straight. A long-standing hypothesis proposes that synchronization of flagella…
Active fluids refer to the fluids that contain self-propelled particles such as bacteria or micro-algae, whose properties differ fundamentally from the passive fluids. Such particles often exhibit an intermittent motion, with high-motility…
Cilia and flagella often exhibit synchronized behavior; this includes phase locking, as seen in {\it Chlamydomonas}, and metachronal wave formation in the respiratory cilia of higher organisms. Since the observations by Gray and Rothschild…
Interactions between microorganisms and solid boundaries play an important role in biological processes, like egg fertilisation, biofilm formation and soil colonisation, where microswimmers move within a structured environment. Despite…
It has long been believed that swimming eukaryotes feel solid boundaries through direct ciliary contact. Specifically, based on observations of behavior of green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii it has been reported that it is their "flagella…
Cells swimming in confined environments are attracted by surfaces. We measure the steady-state distribution of smooth-swimming bacteria (Escherichia coli) between two glass plates. In agreement with earlier studies, we find a strong…
Photosynthetic microbes have evolved and successfully adapted to the ever-changing environmental conditions in complex microhabitats throughout almost all ecosystems on Earth. In the absence of light, they can sustain their biological…
In this article, the effect of diffuse flux in the absence of direct collimated flux on the onset of phototactic bioconvection is investigated. The main effect of diffuse flux in the absence of collimated flux is on the swimming behaviour…
In this article, the effect of rotation on the onset of phototactic bioconvection is investigated using linear stability theory for a suspension of forward-scattering phototactic algae in this article. The suspension is uniformly…
Motivated by recent experiments demonstrating that motile algae get trapped in draining foams, we study the trajectories of microorganisms confined in model foam channels (section of a Plateau border). We track single Chlamydomonas…
The motility of a fish keratocyte on a flat substrate exhibits two distinct regimes: the non-migrating and the migrating one. In both configurations the shape is fixed in time and, when the cell is moving, the velocity is constant in…