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An autochemotactic walker emits a chemical and moves along the
gradient of its concentration field. I show how we model such
a walker and shortly discuss its diffusive properties [1]. Many
walkers interact via chemotaxis but also when they touch each
other. I address how we model such an interaction and discuss
clustering and the stability of particle clusters as a function
of chemotactic strength.
In the second part, I review how we analyzed the random walk of a trypanosome [2]. This is a parasite that causes the sleeping sickness. Starting from experimentally determined trajectories, we developed a model based on two Langevin equations that reproduces appropriate time correlation functions etc. Interestingly, these correlation functions exhibit a short correlation time asscociated with the rapid body distortions of the trypanosome and a longer characteristic time on which the mean swimming direction starts to diffuse. [1] J. Taktikos, V. Zaburdaev, and H. Stark, submitted to Phys. Rev. E. [2] V. Zaburdaev, S. Uppaluri, T. Pfohl, M. Engstler, R. Friedrich, and H. Stark, Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 208103 (2011). |
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