Tunable asymmetric swimming in biflagellate microswimmers
Abstract
Many biological microswimmers can modulate their swimming gait to achieve directional control of motility, especially when performing steering towards specific directional cues. This can be achieved without the need for obvious morphological or structural asymmetries in the form of the organism, or in the number or organization of propulsion-generating appendages such as cilia. In this work, we identify and validate a core principle of asymmetric planar turning in biflagellate microswimmers: cilia-induced forces may interact constructively to drive translation while interacting destructively to drive rotation. We explore the ramifications of this tunable biflagellar swimming mechanism across a range of systems, from a simple, back-of-the-envelope model to a detailed computational representation of an exemplar swimmer. This leads to a general quantitative relation between the key drivers of asymmetry, such as ciliary beat frequency, and the curvature of emergent trajectories. We discuss how the model green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, which actuates its two cilia in a symmetric breaststroke for forward swimming, may exploit this feature for phototaxis. Finally, we validate our predictions in a C. reinhardtii-inspired robophysical model, implementing closed-loop control to achieve phototactic turning in the plane.
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BibTeX
@article{walker2026tunable,
title = {{Tunable asymmetric swimming in biflagellate microswimmers}},
author = {Benjamin Walker and Clément Moreau and Tommie Robinson and Zhaochen Xu and Daniel Goldman and Eamonn Gaffney and Kirsty Wan},
journal = {Journal of the Royal Society Interface},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.1098/rsif.2026.0195},
url = {https://hal.science/hal-05830254v1},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Tunable asymmetric swimming in biflagellate microswimmers
AU - Benjamin Walker
AU - Clément Moreau
AU - Tommie Robinson
AU - Zhaochen Xu
AU - Daniel Goldman
AU - Eamonn Gaffney
AU - Kirsty Wan
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/26
JO - Journal of the Royal Society Interface
DO - 10.1098/rsif.2026.0195
UR - https://hal.science/hal-05830254v1
AB - Many biological microswimmers can modulate their swimming gait to achieve directional control of motility, especially when performing steering towards specific directional cues. This can be achieved without the need for obvious morphological or structural asymmetries in the form of the organism, or in the number or organization of propulsion-generating appendages such as cilia. In this work, we identify and validate a core principle of asymmetric planar turning in biflagellate microswimmers: cilia-induced forces may interact constructively to drive translation while interacting destructively to drive rotation. We explore the ramifications of this tunable biflagellar swimming mechanism across a range of systems, from a simple, back-of-the-envelope model to a detailed computational representation of an exemplar swimmer. This leads to a general quantitative relation between the key drivers of asymmetry, such as ciliary beat frequency, and the curvature of emergent trajectories. We discuss how the model green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, which actuates its two cilia in a symmetric breaststroke for forward swimming, may exploit this feature for phototaxis. Finally, we validate our predictions in a C. reinhardtii-inspired robophysical model, implementing closed-loop control to achieve phototactic turning in the plane.
SN - 1742-5689
SN - 1742-5662
ER -