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Interactions between swimming cells and surfaces are essential to manymicrobiological processes, from bacterial biofilm formation to humanfertilization. However, in spite of their fundamental importance, relativelylittle is known about the physical mechanisms that govern the scattering offlagellated or ciliated cells from solid surfaces. A more detailedunderstanding of these interactions promises not only new biological insightsinto structure and dynamics of flagella and cilia, but may also lead to newmicrofluidic techniques for controlling cell motility and microbial locomotion,with potential applications ranging from diagnostic tools to therapeuticprotein synthesis and photosynthetic biofuel production. Due to fundamentaldifferences in physiology and swimming strategies, it is an open questionwhether microfluidic transport and rectification schemes that have recentlybeen demonstrated for pusher-type microswimmers such as bacteria and spermcells, can be transferred to puller-type algae and other motile eukaryotes, asit is not known whether long-range hydrodynamic or short-range mechanicalforces dominate the surface interactions of these microorganisms. Here, usinghigh-speed microscopic imaging, we present direct experimental evidence thatthe surface scattering of both mammalian sperm cells and unicellular greenalgae is primarily governed by direct ciliary contact interactions. Building onthis insight, we predict and verify experimentally the existence of optimalmicrofluidic ratchets that maximize rectification of initially uniformChlamydomonas reinhardtii suspensions. Since mechano-elastic properties ofcilia are conserved across eukaryotic species, we expect that our results applyto a wide range of swimming microorganisms.

Ciliary contact interactions dominate surface scattering of swimming eukaryotes