Swimming motion of rod-shaped magnetotactic bacteria: the effects of shape and growing magnetic moment
2014
Dali eKong | Wei eLin | Yongxin ePan | Keke eZhang
We investigatethe swimming motion of rod-shaped magnetotactic bacteriaaffiliated with the {it Nitrospirae } phylum in a viscous liquidunder the influence of an externally imposed, time-dependent magnetic field.By assuming that fluid motion driven bythe translation and rotation of a swimming bacteriumis of the Stokes type and that inertial effects of the motionare negligible, we derive a new system of the twelve coupled equationsthat govern both the motion and orientation of a swimming rod-shaped magnetotactic bacteriumwith a growing magnetic moment in the laboratory frame of reference.It is revealed that the initial pattern of swimming motion can bestrongly affected by the rate of the growing magnetic moment.It is also revealed, through comparing mathematical solutions of the twelve coupled equationsto the swimming motion observed in our laboratory experiments with rod-shaped magnetotactic bacteria,that the laboratory trajectories ofthe swimming motion can be approximately reproducedusing an appropriate set of the parameters in our theoretical model.
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