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Main Authors: Hu, Jinglei, Gui, Chen, Mao, Mingxin, Feng, Pu, Liu, Yurui, Gong, Xiangjun, Gompper, Gerhard
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.13350
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author Hu, Jinglei
Gui, Chen
Mao, Mingxin
Feng, Pu
Liu, Yurui
Gong, Xiangjun
Gompper, Gerhard
author_facet Hu, Jinglei
Gui, Chen
Mao, Mingxin
Feng, Pu
Liu, Yurui
Gong, Xiangjun
Gompper, Gerhard
contents A flagellated bacterium navigates fluid environments by rotating its helical flagellar bundle. The wobbling of the bacterial body significantly influences its swimming behavior. To quantify the three underlying motions--precession, nutation, and spin, we extract the Euler angles from trajectories generated by mesoscale hydrodynamics simulations, which is experimentally unattainable. In contrast to the common assumption, the cell body does not undergo complete cycles of spin, a general result for multiflagellated bacteria. Our simulations produce apparent wobbling periods that closely match the results of {\it E. coli} obtained from experiments and reveal the presence of two kinds of precession modes, consistent with theoretical analysis. Small-amplitude yet periodic nutation is also observed in the simulations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_13350
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle How flagellated bacteria wobble
Hu, Jinglei
Gui, Chen
Mao, Mingxin
Feng, Pu
Liu, Yurui
Gong, Xiangjun
Gompper, Gerhard
Soft Condensed Matter
Biological Physics
A flagellated bacterium navigates fluid environments by rotating its helical flagellar bundle. The wobbling of the bacterial body significantly influences its swimming behavior. To quantify the three underlying motions--precession, nutation, and spin, we extract the Euler angles from trajectories generated by mesoscale hydrodynamics simulations, which is experimentally unattainable. In contrast to the common assumption, the cell body does not undergo complete cycles of spin, a general result for multiflagellated bacteria. Our simulations produce apparent wobbling periods that closely match the results of {\it E. coli} obtained from experiments and reveal the presence of two kinds of precession modes, consistent with theoretical analysis. Small-amplitude yet periodic nutation is also observed in the simulations.
title How flagellated bacteria wobble
topic Soft Condensed Matter
Biological Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.13350