Engineering bacterial vortex lattice via direct laser lithography

A suspension of swimming bacteria is possibly the simplest realization of active matter, i.e. a class of systems transducing stored energy into mechanical motion. Collective swimming of hydrodynamically interacting bacteria resembles turbulent flow. This seemingly chaotic motion can be rectified by...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2018-10, Vol.9 (1), p.4486-8, Article 4486
Main Authors: Nishiguchi, Daiki, Aranson, Igor S, Snezhko, Alexey, Sokolov, Andrey
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/57/343/1361
639/301/54/989
639/301/923/966
Antiferromagnetism
Bacteria
BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
bioinspired materials
cellular motility
Control stability
Direct laser writing
Ferromagnetism
Fluid dynamics
Fluid flow
Humanities and Social Sciences
Internal energy
multidisciplinary
Science
science & technology
Science (multidisciplinary)
self-assembly
Swimming
Turbulence
Turbulent flow
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Summary:A suspension of swimming bacteria is possibly the simplest realization of active matter, i.e. a class of systems transducing stored energy into mechanical motion. Collective swimming of hydrodynamically interacting bacteria resembles turbulent flow. This seemingly chaotic motion can be rectified by a geometrical confinement. Here we report on self-organization of a concentrated suspension of motile bacteria Bacillus subtilis constrained by two-dimensional (2D) periodic arrays of microscopic vertical pillars. We show that bacteria self-organize into a lattice of hydrodynamically bound vortices with a long-range antiferromagnetic order controlled by the pillars’ spacing. The patterns attain their highest stability and nearly perfect order for the pillar spacing comparable with an intrinsic vortex size of an unconstrained bacterial turbulence. We demonstrate that the emergent antiferromagnetic order can be further manipulated and turned into a ferromagnetic state by introducing chiral pillars. This strategy can be used to control a wide class of active 2D systems. Geometrically confined suspensions of swimming bacteria can self-organize into an ordered state. Here, the authors use tiny pillars to trigger organization of bacterial motion into a stable lattice of vortices with a long-range antiferromagnetic order and control vortex direction through pillar chirality.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-018-06842-6