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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 5: Active Biological Matter I (joint session BP/CPP/DY)

DY 5.3: Talk

Monday, March 22, 2021, 09:50–10:10, BPb

Emergent activity of motile phytoplankton in nutrient landscapes — •Jayabrata Dhar, Francesco Danza, Arkajyoti Ghoshal, and Anupam Sengupta — Physics of Living Matter Group, Department of Physics and Materials Science, University of Luxembourg, 162 A, Avenue de la Faencerie, L-1511, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

Despite their minuscule size, microbes mediate a range of processes in ecology, medicine, and industrial settings that span orders of nutrient concentrations. Yet, to date, we lack a biophysical framework that could link nutrient availability to phytoplankton behavior and predict the impact of dynamic nutrient conditions on motility. Using a combination of micro-scale imaging, microbiology and fluid dynamic models, we quantify how nutrient availability regulates motility, at both individual and population scales [1]. We extract the time-scales over which phytoplankton actively regulate swimming and morphological characteristics, thus shedding light on the finely tuned biophysical mechanisms that equip cells to tackle spatial and temporal heterogeneity of nutrient landscapes. Our results propose local nutrient levels as a handle to control the activity of motile phytoplankton species, promising an exciting model of tunable motile active matter.

[1] Danza, Dhar, Ghoshal and Sengupta (in prep.)