2025/08/12 by Zhao Wang, Samuel A. Bentley, Jiawei Li +2 · 1 voice · 1 citation
Engineering · Neuroscience · Physics and Astronomy · Psychology · #Communication #Computer science #Micro and Nano Robotics #Molecular Communication and Nanonetworks #Neuroscience #Orbital Angular Momentum in Optics #Physics #Psychology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1101/2025.08.08.669292
published in bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
openalex publication_date 2025/08/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/14
Many swimming microorganisms navigate their environment by modulating the curvature of their swimming trajectories in response to external cues. Here, we show that the biflagellate alga Chlamy-domonas reinhardtii swims in circles and actively switches its trajectory handedness in response to orthogonal illumination: the cell swims counterclockwise at low light intensities yet clockwise at high light intensities. This handedness switching arises from light-dependent modulation of flag-ellar beating, including changes in beat extension, phase, and—crucially—beat plane orientation. Using high-speed imaging and hydrodynamic modeling, we reveal that this beat plane reorientation is critical for Chlamydomonas to swim orthogonally to light as well as to dynamically modulate its trajectory curvature, enabling transitions between global exploration and localized searching in spatially structured light fields. Our results establish beat plane reorientation as a novel mechanism for curvature control in microswimmer navigation.