Molecular adsorption steers bacterial swimming at the air/water interface.

Microbes inhabiting Earth have adapted to diverse environments of water, air, soil, and often at the interfaces of multiple media. In this study, we focus on the behavior of Caulobacter crescentus, a singly flagellated bacterium, at the air/water interface. Forward swimming C. crescentus swarmer cells tend to get physically trapped at the surface when swimming in nutrient-rich growth medium but not in minimal salt motility medium. Trapped cells move in tight, clockwise circles when viewed from the air with slightly reduced speed. Trace amounts of Triton X100, a nonionic surfactant, release the trapped cells from these circular trajectories. We show, by tracing the motion of positively charged colloidal beads near the interface that organic molecules in the growth medium adsorb at the interface, creating a high viscosity film. Consequently, the air/water interface no longer acts as a free surface and forward swimming cells become hydrodynamically trapped. Added surfactants efficiently partition to the surface, replacing the viscous layer of molecules and reestablishing free surface behavior. These findings help explain recent similar studies on Escherichia coli, showing trajectories of variable handedness depending on media chemistry. The consistent behavior of these two distinct microbial species provides insights on how microbes have evolved to cope with challenging interfacial environments.

Accumulation of swimming bacteria near a solid surface.

We measured the distribution of a forward swimming strain of Caulobacter crescentus near a surface using a three-dimensional tracking technique based on dark field microscopy and found that the swimming bacteria accumulate heavily within a micrometer from the surface. We attribute this accumulation to frequent collisions of the swimming cells with the surface, causing them to align parallel to the surface as they continually move forward. The extent of accumulation at the steady state is accounted for by balancing alignment caused by these collisions with the rotational Brownian motion of the micrometer-sized bacteria. We performed a simulation based on this model, which reproduced the measured results. Additional simulations demonstrate the dependence of accumulation on swimming speed and cell size, showing that longer and faster cells accumulate more near a surface than shorter and slower ones do.

Ordering transition of non-Brownian suspensions in confined steady shear flow.

We report on ordering transitions of concentrated non-Brownian suspensions confined by two parallel walls under steady shear. At a volume fraction as low as ϕ=0.48, particles near the wall assemble into strings which are organized as a simple hexagonal array by hydrodynamic interactions. The suspension exhibits a complex phase behavior depending on the ratio of the channel height to the particle radius, Hy/a. In a strongly confined system Hy/a<12, the order state and rheology depend on the commensurability between particle layers and the channel height. At ϕ=0.60 , the order structure in the horizontal plane changes between hexagonal and rectangular structures depending on Hy/a. It is shown that the relative viscosity is a function of both the volume fraction and the ordered state.

Rheology and ordering transitions of non-Brownian suspensions in a confined shear flow: effects of external torques.

We investigate the effect of an external torque, applied in the vorticity direction, to particles in a sheared non-Brownian suspension confined by rigid walls. At volume fractions of ϕ=0.48-0.52 such suspension flows undergo an ordering transition, developing a hexagonal structure of particle strings in the velocity gradient-vorticity plane. The hexagonal structure is disturbed by negative torques, leading to an increase in the shear viscosity. Positive torque has a favorable effect on the ordered state. However, if the magnitude of the positive torque exceeds a certain threshold, the hexagonal order begins to be weakened. Due to the significant changes in suspension microstructures, rheological parameters such as the shear and vortex viscosities exhibit nonlinear responses to the external torques. On the other hand, at lower volume fractions ϕ≤0.40, where ordered structures are not developed, suspension microstructure is not sensitive to an external torque and the apparent viscosity is a linear function of the torque.

Interactions between comoving magnetic microswimmers.

The artificial microswimmer [R. Dreyfus, Nature (London) 437, 862 (2005)] whose mechanism of propulsion is the magnetically driven undulation of a flagellum-like tail composed of chemically linked paramagnetic beads can be used as a physical model with which to study low-Reynolds-number swimming. Understanding how such swimmers interact provides insight into the related problem of quantifying the hydrodynamic interactions between microorganisms. In this study, particle-based numerical simulations are conducted of two comoving artificial swimmers. The resulting swimming speeds are determined over a range of separations for swimmers driven by planar and rotational magnetic fields. The far-field hydrodynamic interactions are analyzed and found to decay as h(-2) where h is the separation distance. Additionally, the role of the interswimmer magnetic forces is determined.

Dynamics of self-assembled chaining in magnetorheological fluids.

The aggregation dynamics of paramagnetic spherical particles embedded in a viscous fluid is investigated via numerical simulations using a fully coupled three-dimensional model. Particles experience simultaneously Brownian motion, dipolar magnetic attraction, and multibody hydrodynamic interactions. When the dipole strength characterizing the ratio of magnetic attraction to random diffusion exceeds a critical value, particles join together forming supraparticle structures. As time evolves, particle/chain and chain/ chain interactions lead to a continuous increase of the cluster size. The mean length of particle chains has a power-law dependence with respect to time, as predicted by the theory of diffusion-limited aggregation. Both the exponent and the characteristic time scale agree very well with the experimental results of Promislow et al.