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Updated: May 16, 2026

Assembly and Characterization of an External Driver for the Generation of Sub-Kilohertz Oscillatory Flow in Microchannels
Published on: January 28, 2022
Driving potential and noise level determine the synchronization state of hydrodynamically coupled oscillators
Nicolas Bruot1, Jurij Kotar, Filippo de Lillo
1Cavendish Laboratory and Nanoscience Centre, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Abstract:
Motile cilia are highly conserved structures in the evolution of organisms, generating the transport of fluid by periodic beating, through remarkably organized behavior in space and time. It is not known how these spatiotemporal patterns emerge and what sets their properties. Individual cilia are nonequilibrium systems with many degrees of freedom. However, their description can be represented by simpler effective force laws that drive oscillations, and paralleled with nonlinear phase oscillators studied in physics. Here a synthetic model of two phase oscillators, where colloidal particles are driven by optical traps, proves the role of the average force profile in establishing the type and strength of synchronization. We find that highly curved potentials are required for synchronization in the presence of noise. The applicability of this approach to biological data is also illustrated by successfully mapping the behavior of cilia in the alga Chlamydomonas onto the coarse-grained model.
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