Related papers: Density-Dependent Transition in Bacterial Self-Org…
Transport at small scales is classically understood within an equilibrium framework, where dispersion theory successfully describes shear-enhanced diffusion for passive particles in the continuum limit. However, as most bacteria can move on…
Bacteria often traverse confined spaces to perform critical functions in symbiosis, infection, drug delivery, and soil bioremediation. While the canonical run-and-tumble strategy enables exploration, its reliance on constant sensing and…
The formation of bacterial biofilms on solid surfaces within a fluid starts when bacteria attach to the substrate. Understanding environmental factors affecting the attachment and the early stages of the biofilm development as well as the…
Periodic reversals of the direction of motion in systems of self-propelled rod shaped bacteria enable them to effectively resolve traffic jams formed during swarming and maximize their swarming rate. In this paper, a connection is found…
How motile bacteria move near a surface is a problem of fundamental biophysical interest and is key to the emergence of several phenomena of biological, ecological and medical relevance, including biofilm formation. Solid boundaries can…
Various bacterial strains (e.g. strains belonging to the genera Bacillus, Paenibacillus, Serratia and Salmonella) exhibit colonial branching patterns during growth on poor semi-solid substrates. These patterns reflect the bacterial…
The effects of internal adaptation dynamics on the self-organized aggregation of chemotactic bacteria are investigated by Monte Carlo (MC) simulations based on a two-stream kinetic transport equation coupled with a reaction-diffusion…
Colonies of rod-shaped bacteria constitute a system of colloidal active matter with nematic properties. As a single initial bacterium multiplies through repeated divisions, the resulting colony quickly loses long-range orientational order,…
Bacteria often form surface-bound communities, embedded in a self-produced extracellular matrix, called biofilms. Quantitative studies of their growth have typically focused on unconfined expansion above solid or semi-solid surfaces,…
The role of activity on the hydrodynamic dispersion of bacteria in a model porous medium is studied by tracking thousands of bacteria in a microfluidic chip containing randomly placed pillars. We first evaluate the spreading dynamics of two…
In the present work we simulate the basic two-dimensional dynamics of swarming E. coli bacteria on the surface of a moderately soft agar plate. Individual bacteria are modelled by self-propelled ridged bodies (agents), which interact with…
The spreading of bacterial populations is central to processes in agriculture, the environment, and medicine. However, existing models of spreading typically focus on cells in unconfined settings--despite the fact that many bacteria inhabit…
The investigation of collective behaviour in dense assemblies of self-propelled active particles has been motivated by a wide range of biological phenomena. Of particular interest are dynamical transitions of cellular and sub-cellular…
In some conditions, bacteria self-organise into biofilms, supracellular structures made of a self-produced embedding matrix, mainly composed on polysaccharides, DNA, proteins and lipids. It is known that bacteria change their colony/matrix…
Bacteria commonly inhabit porous environments such as host tissues, soil, and marine sediments, where complex geometries constrain and redirect their motion. Although bacterial motility has been studied in porous media, the roles of cell…
The extracellular matrix of biofilms presents a dense and intricate architecture. Numerous biophysical properties of the matrix surrounding microbial cells contribute to the heterogeneity of biofilms and their functions at the microscale.…
Bacterial communities such as biofilms are widely recognised as being important for survival and persistence of bacteria in harsh environments. Mechanistic models of biofilm growth indicate that the way in which the surface is seeded can…
Bacteria are ubiquitous in our daily lives, either as motile planktonic cells or as immobilized surface-attached biofilms. These different phenotypic states play key roles in agriculture, environment, industry, and medicine; hence, it is…
Cells control the size and organization of biomolecular condensates formed by liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS), but multiple mechanisms likely contribute to this control and remain to be fully elucidated. Here we propose a…
Densely packed, motile bacteria can adopt collective states not seen in conventional, passive materials. These states remain in many ways mysterious, and their physical characterization can aid our understanding of natural bacterial…