title: Amoeboid motion in confined geometry.
abstract: Many eukaryotic cells undergo frequent shape changes (described as amoeboid motion) that enable them to move forward. We investigate the effect of confinement on a minimal model of amoeboid swimmer. A complex picture emerges: (i) The swimmer's nature (i.e., either pusher or puller) can be modified by confinement, thus suggesting that this is not an intrinsic property of the swimmer. This swimming nature transition stems from intricate internal degrees of freedom of membrane deformation. (ii) The swimming speed might increase with increasing confinement before decreasing again for stronger confinements. (iii) A straight amoeoboid swimmer's trajectory in the channel can become unstable, and ample lateral excursions of the swimmer prevail. This happens for both pusher- and puller-type swimmers. For weak confinement, these excursions are symmetric, while they become asymmetric at stronger confinement, whereby the swimmer is located closer to one of the two walls. In this study, we combine numerical and theoretical analyses.
authors.affiliation: Université Grenoble Alpes, LIPHY, F-38000 Grenoble, France.|CNRS, LIPHY, F-38000 Grenoble, France.
authors.forename: Hao
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Université Grenoble Alpes, LIPHY, F-38000 Grenoble, France.|CNRS, LIPHY, F-38000 Grenoble, France.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Thiébaud
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Mathematics, National Chiao Tung University, 1001 Ta Hsueh Road, Hsinchu 300, Taiwan.
authors.forename: W-F
authors.initials: WF
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: Université Grenoble Alpes, LIPHY, F-38000 Grenoble, France.|CNRS, LIPHY, F-38000 Grenoble, France.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Farutin
authors.affiliation: Université Grenoble Alpes, LIPHY, F-38000 Grenoble, France.|CNRS, LIPHY, F-38000 Grenoble, France.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rafaï
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Mathematics, National Chiao Tung University, 1001 Ta Hsueh Road, Hsinchu 300, Taiwan.
authors.forename: M-C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Lai
authors.affiliation: Université Grenoble Alpes, LIPHY, F-38000 Grenoble, France.|CNRS, LIPHY, F-38000 Grenoble, France.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Peyla
authors.affiliation: Université Grenoble Alpes, LIPHY, F-38000 Grenoble, France.|CNRS, LIPHY, F-38000 Grenoble, France.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Misbah
mesh_terms: D000656:Amoeba / Q000502:physiology*; D008954:Models, Biological; D009068:Movement; D013550:Swimming