Model of Hydrodynamic Interaction Between Swimming Bacteria

We study the dynamics and interaction of two swimming bacteria, modeled by self-propelled dumbbell-type structures. We focus on alignment dynamics of a coplanar pair of elongated swimmers, which propel themselves either by “pushing” or “pulling” both in three- and quasi-two-dimensional geometries of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Bulletin of mathematical biology 2010, Vol.72 (1), p.148-183
Main Authors: Gyrya, Vitaliy, Aranson, Igor S, Berlyand, Leonid V, Karpeev, Dmitry
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bacteria
Cell Biology
Flagella - physiology
Life Sciences
Mathematical and Computational Biology
Mathematics
Mathematics and Statistics
Models, Biological
Numerical Analysis, Computer-Assisted
Original Article
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Summary:We study the dynamics and interaction of two swimming bacteria, modeled by self-propelled dumbbell-type structures. We focus on alignment dynamics of a coplanar pair of elongated swimmers, which propel themselves either by “pushing” or “pulling” both in three- and quasi-two-dimensional geometries of space. We derive asymptotic expressions for the dynamics of the pair, which complemented by numerical experiments, indicate that the tendency of bacteria to swim in or swim off depends strongly on the position of the propulsion force. In particular, we observe that positioning of the effective propulsion force inside the dumbbell results in qualitative agreement with the dynamics observed in experiments, such as mutual alignment of converging bacteria.
ISSN:0092-8240
1522-9602
DOI:10.1007/s11538-009-9442-6