Related papers: Active polymers translocate faster in confinement

While the dynamics of polymer chains in equilibrium media is well understood by now, the polymer dynamics in active non-equilibrium environments can be very different. Here we study the dynamics of polymers in a viscous medium containing…

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…

We propose a novel mechanism of cell motility, which relies on the coupling of actin polymerization at the cell membrane to geometric confinement. We consider a polymerizing viscoelastic cytoskeletal gel confined in a narrow channel, and…

Swimming cells and microorganisms must often move though complex fluids that contain an immersed microstructure such as polymer molecules, or filaments. In many important biological processes, such as mammalian reproduction and bacterial…

We study the driven translocation of a flexible polymer through an interacting conical pore using Langevin dynamics simulations. We find that, for a fixed value of externally applied force and pore polymer interaction strength, the mean…

Microswimmers and active colloids often move in confined systems, including those involving interfaces. Such interfaces, especially at the microscale, may deform in response to the stresses of the flow created by the active particle. We…

Microorganisms ofter move in confined, disordered environments, where hydrodynamic couplings can modify their transport behavior. Using extensive finite-element simulations, we investigate the dynamics of microswimmers -- modeled as…

The locomotion of flexible membrane-like organisms on top of curved surfaces appears in different contexts and scales. Still, such dynamics have not yet been quantitatively modeled and no realization of such motion in manmade systems has…

The transport of biomolecules across a cell membrane is an important phenomena that plays a pivotal role in the functioning of biological cells. In this paper, we investigate such processes by modeling the translocation of polymers through…

We study unbiased translocation of a flexible polymer chain through a membrane pore under the influence of active noise and steric exclusion using Langevin dynamics simulations. The active noise is incorporated by introducing nonchiral and…

Nanoscale and microscale confinement of biopolymers naturally occurs in cells and has been recently achieved in artificial structures designed for nanotechnological applications. Here, we present an extensive theoretical investigation of…

Of all complex fluids, it is probably the rheology of polymers we understand best. In-depth insight into the entanglement and reptation of individual polymers allows us to predict for instance the shear-thinning rheology and the behaviour…

Biological active materials such as bacterial biofilms and eukaryotic cells thrive in confined micro-spaces. Here, we show through numerical simulations that confinement can serve as a mechanical guidance to achieve distinct modes of…

Complex or hostile environments can sometimes inhibit the movement capabilities of diffusive particles or active swimmers, who may thus become stuck in fixed positions. This occurs, for example, in the adhesion of bacteria to surfaces at…

We study the influence of solid boundaries on dynamics and structure of active fluids as the height of the container, $z$, changes. Along the varying dimension, the geometry systematically increases, therefore, the confinement ($z$)…

Flexible filaments moving in viscous fluids are ubiquitous in the natural microscopic world. For example, the swimming of bacteria and spermatozoa as well as important physiological functions at organ-level, such as the cilia-induced motion…

Active droplets are artificial microswimmers built from a liquid dispersion by microfluidic tools and showing self-propelled motion. These systems hold particular interest for mimicking biological phenomena, such as some aspects of cell…

Microorganisms such as algae and bacteria move in a viscous environment with extremely low Reynolds ($Re$), where the viscous drag dominates the inertial forces. They have adapted to this environment by developing specialized features such…

While the collective motion of active particles has been studied extensively, effective strategies to navigate particle swarms without external guidance remain elusive. We introduce a method to control the trajectories of two-dimensional…

Bacterial colonies are a well-known example of living active matter, exhibiting collective behaviors such as nematic alignment and collective motion that play an important role in the spread of microbial infections. While the underlying…