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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 17: Poster Session II

BP 17.1: Poster

Dienstag, 18. März 2025, 18:00–20:30, P4

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

Many microorganisms utilize their cilia or flagella to propel and navigate through their surrounding liquid environment. Often times though, the habitats of such microswimmers comprise confined spaces, and therefore, cell interactions with boundaries play an important role on their navigation. Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a biciliated, 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 cilia and the surface [2]. Here we explore the effect of the cilia length on the motility and surface interactions of the cells using different C. reinhardtii mutant strains with different cilia lengths 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 the different strains we can directly analyse the influence of the cilia length on their swimming motility in confinement.
[1] T. Ostapenko, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 068002 (2018).
[2] J. Cammann et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 118, e2024752118 (2021).

Keywords: Chlamydomonas; Cilia; Surface; Interactions; Microswimmers