Title: Mathematical modeling of flagellated bacterial swimming
Abstract: Bacterial swimming mediated by flagellar rotation is one of the most ubiquitous forms of cellular locomotion and plays a central role in processes ranging from environmental adaptation to symbiosis and pathogenesis. Although the trajectories of flagellated bacteria often resemble random walks, their motion is strongly modulated by environmental cues, resulting in diverse motility patterns and combinations of swimming modes. However, the hydrodynamics governing such microswimmers are highly complex, making quantitative understanding difficult to obtain from experiments alone. In this talk, we present several distinct motility patterns observed across bacterial species together with a versatile mathematical model of a self-propelled bacterium in fluid. By integrating theoretical modeling with experimental observations of cells exhibiting flagellar dynamics, we characterize the hydrodynamic mechanisms underlying their complex swimming behaviors, which may further provide insight into how individual motility strategies give rise to emergent population-level phenomena.