Related papers: Shaping nematic order in bacterial films with sing…
In many situations bacteria move in complex environments, as for example in soils, oceans or the human gut-track microbiome. In these natural environments, carrier fluids such as mucus or reproductive fluids show complex structure…
Biofilms in porous media critically influence hydraulic properties in environmental and engineered systems. However, a mechanistic understanding of how microbial life controls permeability remains elusive. By combining microfluidics,…
Under hard-agar and nutrient-rich conditions, a cell of $Bacillus$ $subtilis$ grows as a single filament owing to the failure of cell separation after each growth and division cycle. The self-elongating filament of cells shows sequential…
The hydrodynamic stresses created by active particles can destabilise orientational order present in the system. This is manifested, for example, by the appearance of a bend instability in active nematics or in quasi-2-dimensional living…
Free interfaces of liquid crystals tend to minimise both capillarity and anchoring forces. Here we study nematic films in planar and radial geometries with antagonistic anchoring boundary conditions and one deformable interface. Assuming a…
We consider the hydrodynamic theory of an active fluid of self-propelled particles with nematic aligning interactions. This class of materials has polar symmetry at the microscopic level, but forms macrostates of nematic symmetry. We…
Spatiotemporal patterns in multicellular systems are important to understanding tissue dynamics, for instance, during embryonic development and disease. Here, we use a multiphase field model to study numerically the behavior of a…
Continuum hydrodynamic models of active liquid crystals have been used to describe dynamic self-organising systems such as bacterial swarms and cytoskeletal gels. A key prediction of such models is the existence of self-stabilising kink…
The dynamics of swimming bacteria depend on the properties of their habitat media. Recently it was shown that the motion of swimming bacteria dispersed directly in a non-toxic water-based lyotropic chromonic liquid crystal can be controlled…
We investigate the emergence of global alignment in colonies of dividing rod-shaped cells under confinement. Using molecular dynamics simulations and continuous modeling, we demonstrate that geometrical anisotropies in the confining…
A big challenge in current biology is to understand the exact self-organization mechanism underlying complex multi-physics coupling developmental processes. With multiscale computations of from subcellular gene expressions to cell…
Microcolonies are aggregates of a few dozen to a few thousand cells exhibited by many bacteria. The formation of microcolonies is a crucial step towards the formation of more mature bacterial communities known as biofilms, but also marks a…
We introduce a minimal model for a collection of self-propelled apolar active particles, also called as `active nematic', on a two-dimensional substrate and study the order-disorder transition with the variation of density. The particles…
Concentrated suspensions of swimming microorganisms and other forms of active matter are known to display complex, self-organized spatio-temporal patterns on scales large compared to those of the individual motile units. Despite intensive…
Rod-shaped bacteria, such as Escherichia coli, commonly live forming mounded colonies. They initially grow two-dimensionally on a surface and finally achieve three-dimensional growth. While it was recently reported that three-dimensional…
Biological systems excel at building spatial structures on scales ranging from nanometers to kilometers and exhibit temporal patterning from milliseconds to years. One approach that nature has taken to accomplish this relies on the…
A collection of thin structures buckle, bend, and bump into each-other when confined. This contact can lead to the formation of patterns: hair will self-organize in curls; DNA strands will layer into cell nuclei; paper, when crumpled, will…
The field of active matter explores the behaviors of self propelled agents out of equilibrium, with active suspensions, such as swimming bacteria in solutions, serving as impactful models. These systems exhibit spatio-temporal patterns akin…
Motility is a fundamental survival strategy of bacteria to navigate porous environments. Swimming cells thrive in quiescent wetlands and sediments at the bottom of the marine water column, where they mediate many essential biogeochemical…
The spread of microbial infections is governed by the self-organization of bacteria on surfaces. Limitations of live imaging techniques make collective behaviors in clinically relevant systems challenging to quantify. Here, novel…