ArticleNature communications2021
A geometric criterion for the optimal spreading of active polymers in porous media.
Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed.
- Dual chemotaxis strategy of bacteria in porous media: Run-time and turn-angle bias.Biophysical journal · 2026Article
- c-di-GMP-mediated pause behavior enablesApplied and environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- Perspective on "Active Brownian particles moving in a random Lorentz gas".The European physical journal. E, Soft matter · 2026Article
- Sperm hyperactivation drives a circling-and-wandering swimming behavior.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Selective Trapping of Bacteria in Porous Media by Cell Length.Integrative and comparative biology · 2026Article
- Form and function in biological filaments: a physicist's review.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2025Review
- Bacterial swimming in porous gels exhibits intermittent run motility with active turns and mechanical trapping.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Giant activity-induced elasticity in entangled polymer solutions.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Physiological magnetic field strengths help magnetotactic bacteria navigate in simulated sediments.eLife · 2025Article
- Coarse-graining bacterial diffusion in disordered media to surface states.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Nongenetic adaptation by collective migration.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- The 2025 motile active matter roadmap.Journal of physics. Condensed matter : an Institute of Physics journal · 2025Review
- Activity-driven polymer knotting for macromolecular topology engineering.Science advances · 2024Article
- Microbes in porous environments: from active interactions to emergent feedback.Biophysical reviews · 2024Review
- Chiral active particles are sensitive reporters to environmental geometry.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Confinement, chaotic transport, and trapping of active swimmers in time-periodic flows.Science advances · 2022Article
- In Silico Studies of Active Probe Dynamics in Crowded Media.ACS omega · 2022Review
- Collective behavior and nongenetic inheritance allow bacterial populations to adapt to changing environments.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Escherichia coli chemotaxis is information limited.Nature physics · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Efficient navigation through disordered, porous environments poses a major challenge for swimming microorganisms and future synthetic cargo-carriers. We perform Brownian dynamics simulations of active stiff polymers undergoing run-reverse dynamics, and so mimic bacterial swimming, in porous media. In accord with experiments of Escherichia coli, the polymer dynamics are characterized by trapping phases interrupted by directed hopping motion through the pores. Our findings show that the spreading of active agents in porous media can be optimized by tuning their run lengths, which we rationalize using a coarse-grained model. More significantly, we discover a geometric criterion for the optimal spreading, which emerges when their run lengths are comparable to the longest straight path available in the porous medium. Our criterion unifies results for porous media with disparate pore sizes and shapes and for run-and-tumble polymers. It thus provides a fundamental principle for optimal transport of active agents in densely-packed biological and environmental settings.
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Registered trials
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