Curvature-guided motility of microalgae in geometric confinement
arXiv:1608.00363 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.068002
Abstract
Microorganisms, such as bacteria and microalgae, often live in habitats consisting of a liquid phase and a plethora of interfaces. The precise ways in which these motile microbes behave in their confined environment remain unclear. Using experiments, Brownian dynamics simulations, and analytical theory, we study the motility of a single Chlamydomonas microalga in an isolated microhabitat with controlled geometric properties. We demonstrate how the geometry of the habitat controls the cell's navigation in confinement. The probability of finding the cell swimming near the boundary scales linearly with the wall curvature, as seen for both circular and elliptical chambers. The theory, utilizing an asymmetric dumbbell model of the cell and steric wall interactions, captures this curvature-guided navigation quantitatively with no free parameters.
9 pages, 5 figures, revised text
References in corpus (21)
- The hydrodynamics of swimming microorganisms
- Physics of Microswimmers - Single Particle Motion and Collective Behavior
- Fluid dynamics and noise in bacterial cell-cell and cell-surface scattering
- Confinement Stabilizes a Bacterial Suspension into a Spiral Vortex
- Direct measurement of the flow field around swimming microorganisms
- Fluid Flows Created by Swimming Bacteria Drive Self-Organization in Confined Suspensions
- Ciliary contact interactions dominate surface scattering of swimming eukaryotes
- Rheotaxis facilitates upstream navigation of mammalian sperm cells
- Oscillatory Flows Induced by Microorganisms Swimming in Two-dimensions
- Hydrodynamic capture of microswimmers into sphere-bound orbits
- Dynamics of Self-Propelled Particles Under Strong Confinement
- Geometric capture and escape of a microswimmer colliding with an obstacle
- Hydrodynamics of confined active fluids
- Microalgae scatter off solid surfaces by hydrodynamic and contact forces
- The force on a body in active matter
- The Physics of Biofilms -- An Introduction
- Scattering of biflagellate microswimmers from surfaces
- Filling an emulsion drop with motile bacteria
- Amoeboid motion in confined geometry
- Giant adsorption of microswimmers: duality of shape asymmetry and wall curvature
- Microorganism Billiards
Cited by in corpus (29)
- Active particles in geometrically confined viscoelastic fluids
- Anomalous cooling and overcooling of active systems
- Ideal circle microswimmers in crowded media
- Emergent probability fluxes in confined microbial navigation
- Transient dispersion process of active particles
- Light-Control of Localised Photo-Bio-Convection
- Wall curvature driven dynamics of a microswimmer
- Capillary action in scalar active matter
- Confinement-induced accumulation and spontaneous de-mixing of microscopic active-passive mixtures
- Hydrodynamic interactions dominate the structure of active swimmers' pair distribution functions
- Active particles with polar alignment in ring-shaped confinement
- Light controls motility and phase separation of photosynthetic microbes
- Rebound and scattering of motile Chlamydomonas algae in confined chambers
- Strong confinement of active microalgae leads to inversion of vortex flow and enhanced mixing
- Axisymmetric Stokes flow due to a point-force singularity acting between two coaxially positioned rigid no-slip disks
- Polar order, shear banding, and clustering in confined active matter
- Methods and measures for investigating microscale motility
- Mechanical pressure and work cycle of confined active Brownian particles
- Motility and self-organization of gliding Chlamydomonas populations
- Kinetic temperature and pressure of an active Tonks gas
- Light-regulated adsorption and desorption of Chlamydomonas cells at surfaces
- Stationary particle currents in sedimenting active matter wetting a wall
- Boundary shape engineering for the spatial control of confined active particles
- Exploring run-and-tumble movement in confined settings through simulation
- Sorting of binary active-passive mixtures in designed microchannels
- Experimental and numerical study of a second-order transition in the behavior of confined self-propelled particles
- Dynamic Force Measurements on Swimming Chlamydomonas Cells using Micropipette Force Sensors
- Dynamical Boundary Following and Corner Trapping of Undulating Worms
- Particle motion nearby rough surfaces