Berlin 2024 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 20: Poster IIIa

BP 20.10: Poster

Wednesday, March 20, 2024, 11:00–14:30, Poster B

Effect of flagella length on the motility of confined microbes — •Tom Sosniok, Alexandros Fragkopoulos, and Oliver Bäumchen — University of Bayreuth, Experimental Physics V, 95447 Bayreuth, Germany

Many microorganisms utilize flagella to propel and navigate through their surrounding liquid environment. Often times though, the natural habitats of such microswimmers comprise confined spaces, and therefore, cell interactions with boundaries play an important role on their navigation. Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a biflagellated, green microalga that is commonly found in soil, typically swims in close proximity to curved boundaries [1]. We found that this near-wall swimming motility is controlled by gradients of wall curvature and steric interactions between the flagella and the surface [2]. Here we explore the effect of the flagella length on the motility and surface interactions of the cells using two different C. reinhardtii strains with different flagella lenghts in quasi-2D circular confinement. We extract information about their motion from their mean squared displacements and visualize the wall-guided swimming via relative and radial probability densities. By comparing the results for both strains we can directly analyse the influnce of the flagella lenght on their motility and find that steric interactions alone are insufficient to describe our observations.

[1] T. Ostapenko et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 068002 (2018).

[2] J. Cammann et al., PNAS 118, e2024752118 (2021).

Keywords: Chlamydomonas; Flagella; Microbial motility; Cell-wall interactions; Microswimmers