Follow the beat: How follower forces explain flagellar beat

Eukaryotic cilia and flagella are some of the best conserved biological structures across species. Giventhe pressure natural selection imposes onto living beings to optimize their body plans, eukaryotic flagella have demonstrated to be an optimal organelle for propulsion at low Reynolds numbers. Therefore, understanding how cilia beat is of...

Experimental Investigation of Ciliary Flow with C. reinhardtii: Hydrodynamics, Ultrastructure, and Ciliary difference

The microscopicworld is surprisingly busywith swimming micro-organisms. In a droplet of pondwater, there can be tens of thousands of microbes. They are predators and preys, producers and consumers, and they formthe bottom levels of the ecology of our world. The swimming micro-organisms can be in general classified into prokaryotes and eukaryotes...

On the dynamics of C. reinhardtii subject to external periodic flows: A model system for synchronization in biology

Synchronization of oscillators is an ubiquitous phenomenon that involves mechanical systems, like pendulum clocks, but also biological systems, like peacemaker cells in the heart or neural activity in the brain. If we consider biological systems at the microscale, namely at the scale of cells, we find that processes like locomotion and fluid...