Life in Complex Fluids: Genetics, Swimming, Crawling, and more
Single cellular organisms like Algae or Bacteria and animals like C. Elegans can swim and crawl in order to explore their environment. But as they are commonly found in heterogeneous and complex environments like mud, puddles or the porous sea-floor, they developed techniques to propel themselves through these environments. Nonetheless, the physics of swimming in such complex environments is not clear yet.
Your Research
Fluid Physics and BioPhysics of living organisms in complex environments. You will work with elasto-viscoplastic materials that share properties of solids and liquids. The experimentalist will work in a team to develop experimental protocols to analyze the motion of single-cell organisms and simple animals in such materials and study their swimming mechanisms in connection to their genetic diversity and properties of the environment. The theoretician will also work in a team (UvA and U Cambridge) to develop a theoretical framework, explaining the motion of the micro-organism in complex fluids. An experiment-theory combo is possible.
Research Question:
How do organims swim in complex environments?
Do organisms actively change their swimming strategy in complex fluids?
Methods involved
Experiments: Fluorescence Microscopy, Image Processing, Rheology, Particle Image Velocimetry, Particle Tracking Velocimetry
Theory: non-linear Differential Equations and their asymptotic solutions, Slender-Body Theory
Literature
Drescher et al. PNAS 2011: 108. 27
Watch Duncan Hewitt’s JNNFM talk HERE