Spatial Distribution of Flagellated Microalgae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii in a Quasi-Two-Dimensional Space

Aono, Tetsuo; Yamashita, Kyohei; Hashimoto, Masafumi; Ishikawa, Yuji; Aizawa, Kentaro; Tokunaga, Eiji

doi:10.3390/mi14040813

Open AccessArticle

Spatial Distribution of Flagellated Microalgae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii in a Quasi-Two-Dimensional Space

by

Tetsuo Aono

^†,

Kyohei Yamashita

^†,

Masafumi Hashimoto

,

Yuji Ishikawa

,

Kentaro Aizawa

and

Eiji Tokunaga

^*

Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Tokyo University of Science, 1-3 Kagurazaka, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 162-8601, Japan

^*

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

^†

These authors contributed equally to this work.

Micromachines 2023, 14(4), 813; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi14040813

Submission received: 20 February 2023 / Revised: 27 March 2023 / Accepted: 29 March 2023 / Published: 2 April 2023

Download

Browse Figures

Versions Notes

Abstract

Although the phenomenon of collective order formation by cell–cell interactions in motile cells, microswimmers, has been a topic of interest, most studies have been conducted under conditions of high cell density, where the space occupancy of a cell population relative to the space size

ϕ > 0.1

(

ϕ

is the area fraction). We experimentally determined the spatial distribution (SD) of the flagellated unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii at a low cell density (

ϕ \approx 0.01

) in a quasi-two-dimensional (thickness equal to cell diameter) restricted space and used the variance-to-mean ratio to investigate the deviation from the random distribution of cells, that is, do cells tend to cluster together or avoid each other? The experimental SD is consistent with that obtained by Monte Carlo simulation, in which only the excluded volume effect (EV effect) due to the finite size of cells is taken into account, indicating that there is no interaction between cells other than the EV effect at a low cell density of

ϕ \approx 0.01

. A simple method for fabricating a quasi-two-dimensional space using shim rings was also proposed.

Keywords: microswimmer; spatial distribution; variance-to-mean ratio; microalga; Chlamydomonas; shim ring; flagella; Poisson distribution; binomial distribution; hydrodynamic interaction

Share and Cite

MDPI and ACS Style

Aono, T.; Yamashita, K.; Hashimoto, M.; Ishikawa, Y.; Aizawa, K.; Tokunaga, E. Spatial Distribution of Flagellated Microalgae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii in a Quasi-Two-Dimensional Space. Micromachines 2023, 14, 813. https://doi.org/10.3390/mi14040813

AMA Style

Aono T, Yamashita K, Hashimoto M, Ishikawa Y, Aizawa K, Tokunaga E. Spatial Distribution of Flagellated Microalgae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii in a Quasi-Two-Dimensional Space. Micromachines. 2023; 14(4):813. https://doi.org/10.3390/mi14040813

Chicago/Turabian Style

Aono, Tetsuo, Kyohei Yamashita, Masafumi Hashimoto, Yuji Ishikawa, Kentaro Aizawa, and Eiji Tokunaga. 2023. "Spatial Distribution of Flagellated Microalgae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii in a Quasi-Two-Dimensional Space" Micromachines 14, no. 4: 813. https://doi.org/10.3390/mi14040813

APA Style

Aono, T., Yamashita, K., Hashimoto, M., Ishikawa, Y., Aizawa, K., & Tokunaga, E. (2023). Spatial Distribution of Flagellated Microalgae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii in a Quasi-Two-Dimensional Space. Micromachines, 14(4), 813. https://doi.org/10.3390/mi14040813

Note that from the first issue of 2016, this journal uses article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.

Article Menu

Spatial Distribution of Flagellated Microalgae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii in a Quasi-Two-Dimensional Space

Abstract

Share and Cite

Article Metrics

Article Access Statistics

Further Information

Guidelines

MDPI Initiatives

Follow MDPI