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Micro-swimmer locomotion in heterogeneous media is increasingly relevant in biological physics due to the prevalence of microorganisms in complex environments. A model for such porous media is the Brinkman fluid which accounts for a sparse…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2026-02-05 Francisca Guzman-Lastra , Enkeleida Lushi

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…

Active turbulence arises typically in systems ranging from microorganisms and biopolymers to synthetic colloids, where chaotic flows are closely associated with motile topological defects in collectively swarming suspensions. Here, we…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2026-04-27 Prince Vibek Baruah , Nadia Bihari Padhan , Biswajit Maji , Rahul Pandit , Prerna Sharma

A fundamental issue in biology is the nature of evolutionary transitions from unicellular to multicellular organisms. Volvocine algae are models for this transition, as they span from the unicellular biflagellate Chlamydomonas to…

Cell Behavior · Quantitative Biology 2022-07-22 K. C. Leptos , M. Chioccioli , S. Furlan , A. I. Pesci , R. E. Goldstein

Inspired by dense contractile tissues, where cells are subject to periodic deformation, we formulate and study a generic hydrodynamic theory of pulsating active liquids. Combining mechanical and phenomenological arguments, we postulate that…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-09-25 Tirthankar Banerjee , Thibault Desaleux , Jonas Ranft , Étienne Fodor

The measurement of a quantitative and macroscopic parameter to estimate the global motility of a large population of swimming biological cells is a challenge Experiments on the rheology of active suspensions have been performed. Effective…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2014-12-12 Salima Rafai , Levan Jibuti , Philippe Peyla

One of the principal mechanisms by which surfaces and interfaces affect microbial life is by perturbing the hydrodynamic flows generated by swimming. By summing a recursive series of image systems we derive a numerically tractable…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2016-10-12 Arnold J. T. M. Mathijssen , Amin Doostmohammadi , Julia M. Yeomans , Tyler N. Shendruk

We discuss the locomotion of a three-sphere microswimmer in a viscoelastic structured fluid characterized by typical length and time scales. We derive a general expression to link the average swimming velocity to the sphere mobilities. In…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2018-08-30 Kento Yasuda , Ryuichi Okamoto , Shigeyuki Komura

Swimming by shape changes at low Reynolds number is widely used in biology and understanding how the efficiency of movement depends on the geometric pattern of shape changes is important to understand swimming of microorganisms and in…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2015-07-31 Qixuan Wang , Hans G. Othmer

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…

Biological Physics · Physics 2014-07-18 Diego Lopez , Eric Lauga

Many swimming microorganisms, such as bacteria and sperm, use flexible flagella to move through viscoelastic media in their natural environments. In this paper we address the effects a viscoelastic fluid has on the motion and beating…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2009-11-13 Henry C. Fu , Charles W. Wolgemuth , Thomas R. Powers

Phototaxis is an important reaction to light displayed by a wide range of motile microorganisms. Flagellated eukaryotic microalgae in particular, like the model organism Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, steer either towards or away from light by…

Cell Behavior · Quantitative Biology 2016-11-28 Jorge Arrieta , Ana Barreira , Maurizio Chioccioli , Marco Polin , Idan Tuval

Viscoelasticity governs the locomotion strategies of deformable microorganisms, rendering it a fundamental mechanical property of microbial motility and an integral component in the design of envisioned microbots. Recent studies have shown…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2026-05-01 Vimal Singh , Akash Choudhary

Many microorganisms swim through gels and non-Newtonian fluids in their natural environments. In this paper, we focus on microorganisms which use flagella for propulsion. We address how swimming velocities are affected in nonlinearly…

Biological Physics · Physics 2010-04-07 Henry C. Fu , Charles W. Wolgemuth , Thomas R. Powers

Active swimmers are ubiquitous in nature, found in many diverse biological systems ranging from bacteria to vertebrate fish. Of particular importance are sperm cells which are swimmers that are crucial for the survival of many species…

Biological Physics · Physics 2017-11-15 James L. Kingsley , Utkan Demirci , Erkan Tuzel

A suspension of gyrotactic microalgae Chlamydomonas augustae swimming in a cylindrical water vessel in solid-body rotation is studied. Our experiments show that swimming algae form an aggregate around the axis of rotation, whose intensity…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2015-11-05 M. Cencini , M. Franchino , F. Santamaria , G. Boffetta

Swimming and pumping at low Reynolds numbers are subject to the "Scallop theorem", which states that there will be no net fluid flow for time reversible motions. Living organisms such as bacteria and cells are subject to this constraint,…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2009-01-20 M. Leoni , J. Kotar , B. Bassetti , P. Cicuta , M. Cosentino Lagomarsino

When swimming in close proximity, some microorganisms such as spermatozoa synchronize their flagella. Previous work on swimming sheets showed that such synchronization requires a geometrical asymmetry in the flagellar waveforms. Here we…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2011-08-31 Gwynn J. Elfring , Eric Lauga

Several recent experiments investigate the orientational and transport behavior of self-driven bacteria and colloidal particles in nematic liquid crystals. Correspondingly, we study theoretically the dynamics of a minimal model microswimmer…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2022-10-28 Abdallah Daddi-Moussa-Ider , Andreas M. Menzel

A dynamic self-organized morphology is the hallmark of network-shaped organisms like slime moulds and fungi. Organisms continuously re-organize their flexible, undifferentiated body plans to forage for food. Among these organisms the slime…

Biological Physics · Physics 2019-03-27 Karen Alim