Chiral cilia carpets on curved surfaces

弯曲表面上的手性纤毛地毯

• 批准号: 2765778
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Bristol
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2765778
• 关键词: Chiral; cilia; carpets; curved; surfaces

Swimming behaviour of organisms in low Reynold's number fluid environments facilitated by cilia has been widely studied in biological physics. Motile cilia are structurally chiral slender protein appendages whose geometric and dynamical characteristics allow them to facilitate cell motility and fluid transport. Systems of many cilia can organise and respond to external stimuli to provide important functions for microorganisms, including directed motion and taxis. Interestingly, this ciliar coordination is not necessarily actively regulated by the organism at the level of the individual cilia, but can instead be described as an emergent phenomenon arising from the hydrodynamic interactions between the cilia. An example of such emergent coordination in cilia carpets was recently studied by F. Meng, R. Bennett, N. Uchida, and R. Golestanian ("Conditions for metachronal coordination in arrays of model cilia", PNAS, 2021). There, it was shown that self-organised beating of cilia arrayed on a flat surface can be understood from the hydrodynamic interactions between them. My research aims to investigate the role of cilia carpets for microswimmer motility by considering their self-organisation on a curved surface that is immersed and moving through the surrounding fluid. Specifically, in this configuration, I want to identify self-organisation and synchronisation mechanisms of ciliary beating, and how the resulting coordination can facilitate controlled swimming. This research is relevant to the study of the motility of ciliates - a large class of marine microorganisms that are characterised by the presence of many cilia on their body surface. These include starfish (Patiria miniata), whose chiral swimming dynamics facilitate the formation of hydrodynamically stablised active crystals recently studied by T. H, Tan, A. Mietke, et al. ("Odd dynamics of living chiral crystals", Nature, 2022). This work will provide a theoretical framework to investigate the dynamical properties of these embryos that underpin chiral swimming and active crystal formation. Collaboration with biophysics experimentalists and measurement of the motion of ciliate cells would allow predictions of the theory to be tested. This project falls within the EPSRC Biophysics and Soft Matter Physics research area and will be conducted under the supervision of Dr Alexander Mietke.

生物在纤毛促进的低雷诺数流体环境中的游泳行为在生物物理学中得到了广泛的研究。游动纤毛是一种结构上手性的细长蛋白质附属物，其几何和动力学特性使其能够促进细胞的运动和液体的运输。许多纤毛系统可以组织并对外部刺激做出反应，为微生物提供重要功能，包括定向运动和趋向性。有趣的是，这种纤毛协调并不一定是由个体纤毛水平上的有机体主动调节的，而是可以描述为纤毛之间的水动力相互作用产生的一种紧急现象。纤毛地毯中这种紧急协调的一个例子最近由F.Meng、R.Bennett、N.Uchida和R.Golestania研究(“模型纤毛阵列中的超色协调的条件”，PNAS，2021)。结果表明，在平面上排列的纤毛的自组织拍打可以从它们之间的流体动力相互作用中得到解释。我的研究旨在通过考虑纤毛地毯在浸泡在周围流体中的曲面上的自组织来研究纤毛地毯对微泳者运动的作用。具体地说，在这个配置中，我想确定纤毛跳动的自组织和同步机制，以及由此产生的协调如何促进受控游泳。这项研究与纤毛虫的运动性研究有关--纤毛虫是一大类海洋微生物，其特征是身体表面存在许多纤毛。其中包括海星(Patiria Mini Ata)，它的手性游泳动力学有助于形成流体动力学稳定的活性晶体，最近由T.H.，Tan，A.Mietke等人研究。(《活的手性晶体的奇特动力学》，《自然》，2022)。这项工作将提供一个理论框架来研究这些胚胎的动力学性质，这些性质是手性游泳和活性晶体形成的基础。与生物物理学实验学家合作，测量纤毛细胞的运动，将使该理论的预测得到验证。该项目属于EPSRC生物物理学和软物质物理研究领域，将在Alexander Mietke博士的监督下进行。