Lecture on "Models for collective motion and pattern formation of gliding and swimming bacteria"

On April 29, at 11:30, in the frame of the Biophysics 2 course of the Engineering Physics Degree, Markus Bär, from the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (Berlin) will give the lecture "Models for collective motion and pattern formation of gliding and swimming bacteria", at room A4-102 in Campus Nord de la UPC.

The lecture is open to people out from the Degree.

ABSTRACT

Experimental studies of colonies of gliding bacteria on a substrate as well as of suspensions of swimming bacteria have revealed many complex patterns stemming from coordinated collective motion of the involved cells. Examples include “living clusters”  and rippling of myxobacteria gliding on a substrate as well as turbulent vortex patterns of swimming Bacillus subtilis in two and three dimensions.  In this talk, I will describe different model approaches for these phenomena. For gliding bacteria, an individual based model of self-propelled rods and related kinetic descriptions explain the transition to clustering above a critical surface density of the bacteria. For bacterial suspensions, a phenomenological continuum model is introduced and shown to be in good agreement with experimental findings.  Finally, the relation between “microscopic” agent-based models and continuum descriptions will be briefly discussed.