TY - JOUR
T1 - Suppression of bacterial rheotaxis in wavy channels
AU - Schmidt, Winfried
AU - Aranson, Igor S.
AU - Zimmermann, Walter
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.
PY - 2022/10
Y1 - 2022/10
N2 - Controlling the swimming behavior of bacteria is crucial, for example, to prevent contamination of ducts and catheters. We show that bacteria modeled by deformable microswimmers can accumulate in flows through straight microchannels either in their center or on previously unknown attractors near the channel walls. In flows through wavy microchannels we predict a resonance effect for semiflexible microswimmers. As a result, microswimmers can be deflected in a controlled manner so that they swim in modulated channels distributed over the channel cross section rather than localized near the wall or the channel center. Thus, depending on the flow amplitude, both upstream orientation of swimmers and their accumulation at the boundaries, which can promote surface rheotaxis, are suppressed. Our results suggest strategies for controlling the behavior of live and synthetic swimmers in microchannels.
AB - Controlling the swimming behavior of bacteria is crucial, for example, to prevent contamination of ducts and catheters. We show that bacteria modeled by deformable microswimmers can accumulate in flows through straight microchannels either in their center or on previously unknown attractors near the channel walls. In flows through wavy microchannels we predict a resonance effect for semiflexible microswimmers. As a result, microswimmers can be deflected in a controlled manner so that they swim in modulated channels distributed over the channel cross section rather than localized near the wall or the channel center. Thus, depending on the flow amplitude, both upstream orientation of swimmers and their accumulation at the boundaries, which can promote surface rheotaxis, are suppressed. Our results suggest strategies for controlling the behavior of live and synthetic swimmers in microchannels.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85139725689&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85139725689&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevResearch.4.043005
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevResearch.4.043005
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85139725689
SN - 2643-1564
VL - 4
JO - Physical Review Research
JF - Physical Review Research
IS - 4
M1 - 043005
ER -