Related papers: Optimal chemotactic navigation in disordered lands…
We propose a physical framework for ant navigation of chemical trails. For this, we use controlled experiments in which individuals follow narrow pheromone trails, for which ants display oscillatory motion, as previously reported in the…
We consider random search processes alternating stochastically between diffusion and ballistic motion, in which the distribution function of ballistic motion directions varies from point to point in space. The specific space dependence of…
The question of how "smart" active agents, like insects, microorganisms, or future colloidal robots need to steer to optimally reach or discover a target, such as an odor source, food, or a cancer cell in a complex environment has recently…
The quest for the optimal navigation strategy in a complex environment is at the heart of microswimmer applications like cargo carriage or drug targeting to cancer cells. Here, we formulate a variational Fermat's principle for microswimmers…
We study chemotaxis of a single {\sl E.coli} bacterium in a medium where the nutrient chemical is also undergoing diffusion and its concentration has the form of a Gaussian whose width increases with time. We measure the average first…
Microorganisms often perform chemotaxis, (i.e., sensing and moving toward a region with a higher concentration of an attractive chemical) by changing the rate of tumbling for random walk. We studied several models with internal adaptive…
We present an approach for identifying the most walkable direction for navigation using a hand-held camera. Our approach extracts semantically rich contextual information from the scene using a custom encoder-decoder architecture for…
Navigation up a sensory gradient is one of the simplest behaviours, and the simplest strategy is run and tumble. But some organisms use other strategies, such as reversing direction or turning by some angle. Here we ask what drives the…
The bacterium Escherichia coli (E. coli) moves in its natural environment in a series of straight runs, interrupted by tumbles which cause change of direction. It performs chemotaxis towards chemo-attractants by extending the duration of…
We experimentally, numerically and analytically explore the diffusive transport of active colloidal particles with sensory delay, navigating motility landscapes in which the self-propulsion speed depends on space. We show how the transport…
Enhanced colloidal transport beyond the limit imposed by diffusion is usually achieved through external fields. Here, we demonstrate the ballistic transport of a colloidal sphere using internal sources of energy provided by an attached…
While it is commonly observed that the shape dynamics of mammalian cells can undergo large random fluctuations, theoretical models aiming at capturing cell mechanics often focus on the deterministic part of the motion. In this paper, we…
Single-cell organisms and various cell types use a range of motility modes when following a chemical gradient, but it is unclear which mode is best suited for different gradients. Here, we model directional decision-making in chemotactic…
Living microorganisms are capable of a tactic response to external stimuli by swimming towards or away from the stimulus source; they do so by adapting their tactic signal transduction pathways to the environment. Their self-motility thus…
Molecular motion through pores plays a crucial role in various natural and industrial processes. One of the most fascinating features of biological channel-facilitated transport is a stochastic gating process, when the channels dynamically…
Organisms move through the world by changing their shape, and here we explore the mapping from shape space to movements in the nematode C. elegans as it crawls on a planar agar surface. We characterize the statistics of the trajectories…
Collective cell migration is a multicellular phenomenon that arises in various biological contexts, including cancer and embryo development. "Collectiveness" can be promoted by cell-cell interactions such as co-attraction and contact…
Chemotaxis of the bacterium Escherichia coli is well understood in shallow chemical gradients, but its swimming behavior remains difficult to interpret in steep gradients. By focusing on single-cell trajectories from simulations, we…
We design new navigation strategies for travel time optimization of microscopic self-propelled particles in complex and noisy environments. In contrast to strategies relying on the results of optimal control theory, these protocols allow…
Aerotaxis is the particular form of chemotaxis in which oxygen plays the role of both the attractant and the repellent. Aerotaxis occurs without methylation adaptation, and it leads to fast and complete aggregation toward the most favorable…