Dresden 2017 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 27: Posters - Microswimmers

BP 27.2: Poster

Tuesday, March 21, 2017, 14:00–16:00, P2-EG

Curvature-Guided Motility of Single Microalgae in Geometric Confinement — Tanya Ostapenko, Fabian Schwarzendahl, •Thomas Böddeker, Christian T. Kreis, Jan Cammann, Marco G. Mazza, and Oliver Bäumchen — Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPIDS), Am Fassberg 17, 37077 Göttingen, Germany

Microorganisms often live in habitats consisting of a liquid phase and a variety of curved interfaces. Understanding the precise way in which such organisms behave in their environment finds technological relevance with regards to surface colonization leading to biofilm formation. Using experiments, simulations, and analytics, we study the motility of a single Chlamydomonas cell in an isolated microhabitat with controlled geometric properties. We provide evidence that the local wall curvature controls the cell’s navigation in confinement, where there is an enhanced probability of finding the cell in the vicinity of a wall with high curvature. This probability scales linearly with the curvature of the interface, as seen for both circular and elliptical chambers. Our theory utilizing a dumbbell model of the organism captures our experimental data quantitatively, with no free parameters, evoking only steric wall interactions and the cell’s torque at the wall during an interaction event with finite time. Thus, hydrodynamics are not necessary to describe the statistical behavior of the cell’s swimming on the compartment length scale. (T. Ostapenko, et al. arXiv:1608.00363, 2016)