Regensburg 2022 – scientific programme
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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik
CPP 47: Active Matter 5 (joint session DY/BP/CPP)
CPP 47.5: Talk
Friday, September 9, 2022, 11:00–11:15, H18
Collective transport of microparticles by active cells — •Robert Großmann1, Kevin Meißner1, Fernando Peruani2, and Carsten Beta1 — 1University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany — 2CY Cergy Paris Université, Cergy-Pontoise, France
Motivated by the challenge of targeted delivery of micron-sized objects, we investigate a novel type of bio-hybrid active matter, composed of motile cells acting as autonomously moving agents that transport passive cargoes. The transport process is a collective phenomenon: a bead can be lost by one cell and may picked up by another one, or multiple cells transport one bead together, thereby giving rise to an intermittent, stochastic stop-and-go dynamics. Combining experiment and active matter theory, we investigate the emerging transport properties of this system. We first deduce the waiting time distributions of active and passive transport episodes from experiments with the amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum: whereas the duration of actual transport phases – determined by the time that cells and cargoes are in contact – are exponentially distributed, the waiting time distribution for passive periods exhibits power-law characteristics which results from the search of cells looking for immobile colloids. We predict displacement distributions and the mean-squared displacement of colloids based on the statistics of waiting times and particularly point out a crossover from normal to subdiffusive scaling. These results provide the basis for the future design of cellular micro-carriers and for extending our findings to more advanced transport tasks in complex, disordered environments, such as tissues.