Theory Group Lunchtime Seminars
Scheduled seminars are listed below.
Announcements and reminders will be posted to the physics-theory-group-seminar list.
To join this list:
- Sign into your university email account via webmail.
- Click the settings icon along the top icon bar (looks like a cog/gear).
- In the "Search Outlook settings" box type "distribution groups" and click the top search result.
- Under "Distribution groups I belong to" click the icon with two little people and a "+" sign.
- Search for physics-theory-group-seminar and double click on the result.
- Click "join". You will then be added to the email list once approved by a moderator.
To leave this list:
- Sign into your university email account via webmail.
- Click the settings icon along the top icon bar (looks like a cog/gear).
- In the "Search Outlook settings" box type "distribution groups" and click the top search result.
- Under "Distribution groups I belong to" click
physics-theory-group-seminar. - Click the "leave" icon above the list (looks like two people with a minus sign to their bottom right).
[If you are a member of Theory group, you will receive seminar announcements via physics-theory or physics-theory-staff. You do NOT need to subscribe to the above mailing list as well.]
Theory Group Seminar By: L. Goehring, Title:Active Spaghetti: Collective Organization in Cyanobacteria
TITLE: Active Spaghetti: Collective Organization in Cyanobacteria
SPEAKER: Lucas GOEHRING
AFFILIATION: Nottingham Trent University
ABSTRACT:
Filamentous cyanobacteria can show fascinating patterns 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 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.