Related papers: Rheologically tuned diffusion modulates quorum sen…
Interactions between microorganisms and their complex flowing environments are essential in many biological systems. We develop a model for microswimmer dynamics in non-Newtonian Poiseuille flows. We predict that swimmers in…
Water plays a key role in biological membrane transport. In ion channels and water-conducting pores (aquaporins), one dimensional confinement in conjunction with strong surface effects changes the physical behavior of water. In molecular…
The dynamics and rheology of a vesicle confined in a channel under shear flow are studied at finite temperature. The effect of finite temperature on vesicle motion and system viscosity is investigated. A two-dimensional numerical model,…
Bacteria living on surfaces use different types of motility mechanisms to move on the surface in search of food or to form micro-colonies. Twitching is one such form of motility employed by bacteria such as N. gonorrhoeae, in which the…
Trajectories and conformations of uni- and multiflagellar bacteria are studied with a coarse-grained model of a cell comprised of elastic flagella connected to a cell body. The elasticities of both the hook protein (connecting cell body and…
Recent research has shown that motile cells can adapt their mode of propulsion depending on the environment in which they find themselves. One mode is swimming by blebbing or other shape changes, and in this paper we analyze a class of…
Adding swimming bacteria to a liquid causes its effective shear viscosity to decrease, eventually reaching a regime of zero viscosity. We examined whether this property leads to viscous finger-like displacement fronts like those observed…
We numerically study the dynamics of run-and-tumble particles confined in two chambers connected by thin channels. Two dominant dynamical behaviors emerge: (i) an oscillatory pumping state, in which particles periodically fill the two…
Bacteria such as Escherichia coli (E. coli) exhibit biased motion if kept in a spatially non-uniform chemical environment. Here, we bring out unique time-dependent characteristics of bacterial chemotaxis, in response to a diffusing spatial…
Flagellated bacteria exploiting helical propulsion are known to swim along circular trajectories near surfaces. Fluid dynamics predicts this circular motion to be clockwise (CW) above a rigid surface (when viewed from inside the fluid) and…
Shear-thinning viscosity is a non-Newtonian behaviour that active particles often encounter in biological fluids such as blood and mucus. The fundamental question of how this ubiquitous non-Newtonian rheology affects the propulsion of…
Diverse processes--e.g. bioremediation, biofertilization, and microbial drug delivery--rely on bacterial migration in disordered, three-dimensional (3D) porous media. However, how pore-scale confinement alters bacterial motility is unknown…
We used single-molecule tracking to probe the local rheology of interfacial water. Fluorescent rhodamine molecules were tracked on silica surfaces as a function of ambient relative humidity, which controlled the thickness of condensed water…
Escherichia coli and other bacteria use rotating helical filaments to swim. Each cell typically has about four filaments, which bundle or disperse depending on the sense of motor rotation. To study the bundling process, we built a…
Interactions between swimming cells and surfaces are essential to many microbiological processes, from bacterial biofilm formation to human fertilization. However, in spite of their fundamental importance, relatively little is known about…
Numerical simulations of vesicle suspensions are performed in two dimensions to study their dynamical and rheological properties. An hybrid method is adopted, which combines a mesoscopic approach for the solvent with a curvature-elasticity…
Many microorganisms propel through complex media by deformations of their flagella. The beat is thought to emerge from interactions between forces of the surrounding fluid, passive elastic response from deformations of the flagellum, and…
Plasma membranes appear as deformable systems wherein molecules are free to move and diffuse giving rise to condensed microdomains (composed of ordered lipids, transmembrane proteins and cholesterol) surrounded by disordered lipid…
Trypanosoma brucei (T. brucei), a single-celled parasite and natural microswimmer, is responsible for fatal sleeping sickness in infected mammals, including humans. Understanding how T. brucei interacts with fluid environments and navigates…
The accumulation of swimming bacteria near surfaces may lead to biological processes such as biofilm formation and wound infection. Previous experimental observations of Vibrio alginolyticus showed an interesting correlation between the…