Hydrodynamic Modelling of Thin Elastic Filaments at Low Reynolds Number with Applications to Bacterial Motility
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Understanding low Reynolds number filament dynamics has been an ongoing field of study in biology for several decades. One application of this work is to understand flagellar dynamics and their impact on bacterial chemotaxis, viscotaxis, and invasiveness. Here, we develop a new elastic filament algorithm with applications to micro-robotics, molecular dynamics, as well as bacterial motility. We demonstrate how this algorithm can expand upon previously studied molecular and bacterial dynamics problems. We then combine our algorithm with hydrodynamic methods in order to understand spiroplasma bacteria motility. Spiroplasma is a unique genus of helical bacteria which can swim without the use of flagella or cell wall. Instead, swimming is achieved by dynamically altering a set of cytoskeletal filaments which alter the shape of the cell body. Because little is known regarding spiroplasma’s cytoskeletal interactions with its cell membrane, we use a combination of experiment and computational analysis to determine the nature of spiroplasma’s cytoskeletal force and torque generation.
Place: Math, 402