Enhanced locomotion, effective diffusion and trapping of undulatory micro-swimmers in heterogeneous environments.

ABSTRACT: Swimming cells and microorganisms must often move through complex fluids that contain an immersed microstructure such as polymer molecules or filaments. In many important biological processes, such as mammalian reproduction and bacterial infection, the size of the immersed microstructure is comparable to that of the swimming cells. This leads to discrete swimmer-microstructure interactions that alter the swimmer's path and speed. In this paper, we use a combination of detailed simulation and data-driven stochastic models to examine the motion of a planar undulatory swimmer in an environment of spherical obstacles tethered via linear springs to random points in the plane of locomotion. We find that, depending on environmental parameters, the interactions with the obstacles can enhance swimm

SUBMITTER: Kamal A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6283981 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature