Abstract
Mathematical modeling and quantitative study of biological motility (in particular, of motility at microscopic scales) is producing new biophysical insight and is offering opportunities for new discoveries at the level of both fundamental science and technology. These range from the explanation of how complex behavior at the level of a single organism emerges from body architecture, to the understanding of collective phenomena in groups of organisms and tissues, and of how these forms of swarm intelligence can be controlled and harnessed in engineering applications, to the elucidation of processes of fundamental biological relevance at the cellular and sub-cellular level. In this paper, some of the most exciting new developments in the fields of locomotion of unicellular organisms, of soft adhesive locomotion across scales, of the study of pore translocation properties of knotted DNA, of the development of synthetic active solid sheets, of the mechanics of the unjamming transition in dense cell collectives, of the mechanics of cell sheet folding in volvocalean algae, and of the self-propulsion of topological defects in active matter are discussed. For each of these topics, we provide a brief state of the art, an example of recent achievements, and some directions for future research.
Highlights
The study of biological motility and, in particular, motility at microscopic scales (MicroMotility) has enjoyed considerable success in recent years
Mathematical modeling and quantitative study of biological motility is producing new biophysical insight and is offering opportunities for new discoveries at the level of both fundamental science and technology. These range from the explanation of how complex behavior at the level of a single organism emerges from body architecture, to the understanding of collective phenomena in groups of organisms and tissues, and of how these forms of swarm intelligence can be controlled and harnessed in engineering applications, to the elucidation of processes of fundamental biological relevance at the cellular and sub-cellular level
As an indication of possible avenues for future research, many other organisms may offer themselves as models to study how an organismal function can be correlated to a biophysical mechanism and, in particular, to specific details of the body architecture, just as what we found in the case of E. gracilis
Summary
The study of biological motility and, in particular, motility at microscopic scales (MicroMotility) has enjoyed considerable success in recent years. Looking back at biology through the functionalist view of an engineer wishing to replicate its successes can help us understand how biological machines function, with a level of detail which is unprecedented This two-directional interaction between biology and mechanics is promoting a new approach in robotic research, in particular in the new field of Soft Robotics: Understanding biology by constructing bio-inspired machines, build new machines thanks to bio-inspiration [55, 58]. Another related topic is the collective behavior of groups of motile organisms. Some of these are explored further below, where in each thematic section we provide a brief state of the art, an example of recent achievements, and some directions for future research
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