Enhanced locomotion, effective diffusion, and trapping of undulatory micro-swimmers in heterogeneous environments

Swimming cells and microorganisms must often move through complex fluids that contain an immersed microstructure such as polymer molecules or filaments. In many important biological processes, such as mammalian reproduction and bacterial infection, the size of the immersed microstructure is comparable to that of the swimming cells. This leads to discrete swimmer–microstructure interactions that alter the swimmer’s path and speed. In this paper, we use a combination of detailed simulation and data-driven stochastic models to examine the motion of a planar undulatory swimmer in an environment of spherical obstacles tethered via linear springs to random points in the plane of locomotion. We find that, depending on environmental parameters, the interactions with the obstacles can enhance swimming speeds or prevent the swimmer from moving at all. We also show how the discrete interactions produce translational and angular velocity fluctuations that over time lead to diffusive behaviour primarily due to the coupling of swimming and rotational diffusion. Our results demonstrate that direct swimmer–microstructure interactions can produce changes in swimmer motion that may have important implications for the spreading of cell populations in or the trapping of harmful pathogens by complex fluids