Active Spaghetti: Collective Organization in Cyanobacteria
Filamentous cyanobacteria can show fascinating examples of nonequilibrium self-organization, which however are not well-understood from a physical perspective. We investigate the motility and collective organization of colonies of these simple multicellular lifeforms. As their area density increases...
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Veröffentlicht in: | arXiv.org 2023-10 |
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Format: | Artikel |
Sprache: | eng |
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Zusammenfassung: | Filamentous cyanobacteria can show fascinating examples of nonequilibrium self-organization, which however are not well-understood from a physical perspective. We investigate the motility and collective organization of colonies of these simple multicellular lifeforms. As their area density increases, linear chains of cells gliding on a substrate show a transition from an isotropic distribution to bundles of filaments arranged in a reticulate pattern. Based on our experimental observations of individual behavior and pairwise interactions, we introduce a nonreciprocal model accounting for the filaments' large aspect ratio, fluctuations in curvature, motility, and nematic interactions. This minimal model of active filaments recapitulates the observations, and rationalizes the appearance of a characteristic lengthscale in the system, based on the Peclet number of the cyanobacteria filaments. |
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ISSN: | 2331-8422 |
DOI: | 10.48550/arxiv.2301.11667 |