Back

Emergent hydrodynamic synchronization between microbeads labelingbacterial flagellar motors

Ishihara, T.; Uchida, N.; Nakamura, S.

2026-02-13 biophysics
10.1101/2025.10.19.683311 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Synchronization is a fundamental phenomenon observed across a wide range of physical, chemical, and biological systems. Even under the low-Reynolds-number conditions that govern microbial motility, synchronization of rhythmic processes is considered essential for diverse activities ranging from single cells to populations, yet experimental evidence remains scarce. Here, we performed rotation measurements of microbeads attached to two truncated bacterial flagella and observed the emergence of phase synchronization between these nanoscale active motors. The resulting intermittent in-phase synchronization was analyzed using a hydrodynamic model incorporating elastic deformation of the flagella, showing that stronger hydrodynamic coupling promotes more stable phase-locking. This study experimentally demonstrates fluid-mediated biological synchronization using bacterial rotary machinery, deepening our understanding of the physical principles underlying rhythmic phenomena and self-organization in living systems.

Matching journals

The top 5 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

1
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
● 2444 papers in training set
Top 0.7%
22.0%
Similar papers in this journal
2
Biophysical Journal
○ 631 papers in training set
Top 0.6%
11.7%
Similar papers in this journal
3
Nature Communications
○ 5641 papers in training set
Top 21%
7.8%
Similar papers in this journal
4
eLife
● 5828 papers in training set
Top 16%
7.1%
Similar papers in this journal
5
Journal of The Royal Society Interface
● 235 papers in training set
Top 0.6%
6.2%
Similar papers in this journal
50% of probability mass above
6
Nature Physics
○ 45 papers in training set
Top 0.1%
5.4%
7
Physical Review Letters
● 47 papers in training set
Top 0.1%
5.1%
8
Physical Review Research
● 49 papers in training set
Top 0.1%
4.8%
9
PLOS Computational Biology
● 1863 papers in training set
Top 8%
4.8%
10
Science Advances
● 1243 papers in training set
Top 11%
3.2%
11
Physical Review E
● 112 papers in training set
Top 0.7%
1.9%
12
PRX Life
● 42 papers in training set
Top 0.4%
1.9%
13
Communications Biology
○ 993 papers in training set
Top 15%
1.7%
14
Scientific Reports
○ 3612 papers in training set
Top 57%
1.5%
15
Physical Review X
● 25 papers in training set
Top 0.4%
1.1%
16
iScience
○ 1154 papers in training set
Top 28%
1.1%
17
PNAS Nexus
◐ 159 papers in training set
Top 3%
1.0%
18
The ISME Journal
◐ 228 papers in training set
Top 3%
0.8%
19
mBio
● 833 papers in training set
Top 11%
0.8%
20
Communications Physics
○ 14 papers in training set
Top 0.1%
0.8%
21
Advanced Science
○ 286 papers in training set
Top 11%
0.6%
22
Current Biology
○ 665 papers in training set
Top 11%
0.6%

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.