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Related papers: Phototactic Decision-Making by Micro-Algae

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Chemotaxis, the directional locomotion of cells towards a source of a chemical gradient, is an integral part of many biological processes - for example, bacteria motion, single-cell or multicellular organisms development, immune response,…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2021-03-29 Yishu Gong , Alexander Kiselev

A promising approach to transport cargo at the microscale lies within the use of self-propelled microorganisms, whose motion entrains that of passive particles. However, most applications remain limited to just a few passive particles of…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2026-03-30 Taha Laroussi , Julien Bouvard , Etienne Jambon-Puillet , Mojtaba Jarrahi , Gabriel Amselem

We present the first time-resolved measurements of the oscillatory velocity field induced by swimming unicellular microorganisms. Confinement of the green alga C. reinhardtii in stabilized thin liquid films allows simultaneous tracking of…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2015-05-19 Jeffrey S. Guasto , Karl A. Johnson , J. P. Gollub

Schooling, an archetype of collective behavior, emerges from the interactions of fish responding to visual and other informative cues mediated by their aqueous environment. In this context, a fundamental and largely unexplored question…

The bacterium E.Coli swims in a zig-zag manner, in a series of straight runs and tumbles occurring alternately, with the run-durations dependent on the local spatial gradient of chemo-attractants/repellants. This enables the organism to…

Cell Behavior · Quantitative Biology 2008-12-31 Melissa Reneaux , Manoj Gopalakrishnan

Cells are constantly exposed to diverse stimuli-chemical, mechanical, or electrical-that guide their movement. In physiological conditions, these signals often overlap, as seen during infections, where neutrophils and dendritic cells…

Biological Physics · Physics 2026-03-25 Emiliano Perez Ipiña , Brian A. Camley

A swimming microorganism stirs the surrounding fluid, creating a flow field that governs not only its locomotion and nutrient uptake, but also its interactions with other microorganisms and the environment. Despite its fundamental…

The day-night cycle drives the largest biomass migration on Earth: the diel vertical migration (DVM) of aquatic organisms. Here, we present a three-dimensional agent-based model that incorporates photokinesis, gyrotaxis, and stochastic…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-06-25 J. Morales , P. Munoz , D. Noto , H. N Ulloa , F. Guzman-Lastra

Concentrated suspensions of swimming microorganisms and other forms of active matter are known to display complex, self-organized spatio-temporal patterns on scales large compared to those of the individual motile units. Despite intensive…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2014-07-15 Enkeleida Lushi , Hugo Wioland , Raymond E Goldstein

Multicellular chemotaxis can occur via individually chemotaxing cells that are mechanically coupled. Alternatively, it can emerge collectively, from cells chemotaxing differently in a group than they would individually. Here we consider…

Biological Physics · Physics 2017-11-01 Julien Varennes , Sean Fancher , Bumsoo Han , Andrew Mugler

We present a method to differentiate organisms solely by their motion based on the generalized Langevin equation (GLE) and use it to distinguish two different swimming modes of strongly confined unicellular microalgae Chlamydomonas…

Biological Physics · Physics 2024-05-24 Anton Klimek , Debasmita Mondal , Stephan Block , Prerna Sharma , Roland R. Netz

Organisms must acquire and use environmental information to guide their behaviors. However, it is unclear whether and how information quantitatively limits behavioral performance. Here, we relate information to behavioral performance in…

Biological Physics · Physics 2023-02-22 Henry H. Mattingly , Keita Kamino , Benjamin B. Machta , Thierry Emonet

Eukaryotic adaptation pathways operate within wide-ranging environmental conditions without stimulus saturation. Despite numerous differences in the adaptation mechanisms employed by bacteria and eukaryotes, all require energy consumption.…

Cell Behavior · Quantitative Biology 2014-03-05 Giovanna De Palo , Robert G. Endres

The cell wall serves as a mechanical protection for the fungi and controls the traffic of molecules entering the cell. However, the optical role of the cell wall has not been fully investigated. In this work, we use a computational…

Biological Physics · Physics 2021-04-23 Lautaro Baró , Andrés E. Dolinko , Sonia Rosenfeldt , Diana C. Skigin , Cecilia Carmarán

Receptor-mediated endocytosis requires that the energy of adhesion overcomes the deformation energy of the plasma membrane. The resulting driving force is balanced by dissipative forces, leading to deterministic dynamical equations. While…

Subcellular Processes · Quantitative Biology 2019-11-20 Felix Frey , Falko Ziebert , Ulrich S. Schwarz

Cells and microorganisms adopt various strategies to migrate in response to different environmental stimuli. To date, many modeling research has focused on the crawling-based Dictyostelium discoideum (Dd) cells migration induced by…

Tissues and Organs · Quantitative Biology 2021-04-20 Qixuan Wang , Hao Wu

Understanding how fluctuations propagate across spatial scales is central to our understanding of inanimate matter from turbulence to critical phenomena. In contrast to physical systems, biological systems are organized into a hierarchy of…

Biological Physics · Physics 2025-01-10 Felix Meige , Lina Hellwig , Harald Stachelscheid , Philipp Mergenthaler , Steffen Rulands

The spherical alga Volvox swims by means of flagella on thousands of surface somatic cells. This geometry and its large size make it a model organism for studying the fluid dynamics of multicellularity. Remarkably, when two nearby Volvox…

Decision-making is the process of selecting an action among alternatives, allowing biological and artificial systems to navigate complex environments and optimize behavior. While neural systems rely on neuron-based sensory processing and…

Biological Physics · Physics 2025-06-17 Lisa Schick , Emily Eichenlaub , Fabian Drexel , Alexander Mayer , Siyu Chen , Marcus Roper , Karen Alim

Our knowledge of how individual cells self-organize to form complex multicellular systems is being revolutionized by a data outburst, coming from high-throughput experimental breakthroughs such as single-cell RNA sequencing and spatially…

Cell Behavior · Quantitative Biology 2021-04-20 Gabriel Torregrosa , Jordi Garcia-Ojalvo