Viscotaxis: microswimmer navigation in viscosity gradients
| Autor: | Hartmut Löwen, Benno Liebchen, Borge ten Hagen, Paul A. Monderkamp |
|---|---|
| Přispěvatelé: | Physics of Fluids |
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2017 |
| Předmět: |
Leptospira
cond-mat.soft biology Viscosity Chemistry Spiroplasma General Physics and Astronomy FOS: Physical sciences 02 engineering and technology Condensed Matter - Soft Condensed Matter 021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology biology.organism_classification Models Biological 01 natural sciences Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph) 0103 physical sciences physics.bio-ph Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) Physics - Biological Physics 010306 general physics 0210 nano-technology Biological system |
| Zdroj: | Physical review letters, 120(20):208002. American Physical Society |
| ISSN: | 0031-9007 |
| Popis: | The survival of many microorganisms, like \textit{Leptospira} or \textit{Spiroplasma} bacteria, can depend on their ability to navigate towards regions of favorable viscosity. While this ability, called viscotaxis, has been observed in several bacterial experiments, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Here, we provide a framework to study viscotaxis of self-propelled swimmers in slowly varying viscosity fields and show that suitable body shapes create viscotaxis based on a systematic asymmetry of viscous forces acting on a microswimmer. Our results shed new light on viscotaxis in \textit{Spiroplasma} and \textit{Leptospira} and suggest that dynamic body shape changes exhibited by both types of microorganisms may have an unrecognized functionality: to prevent them from drifting to low viscosity regions where they swim poorly. The present theory classifies microswimmers regarding their ability to show viscotaxis and can be used to design synthetic viscotactic swimmers, e.g.\ for delivering drugs to a target region distinguished by viscosity. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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