[Soft-matter] Soft Matter & Complex Systems Seminar on 6 Mar 2026

[Maciej Lisicki]

Dear Soft Matter & Complex Systems Colleagues and Friends,

On Friday 6 March 2026 at 9:30 AM at the UW Faculty of Physics (Pasteura 5, Warsaw; room 1.40) we are hosting a seminar, during which 

Jonasz Słomka (FUW)

will give a talk
How encounters at the microscale prime microbial interactions

Abstract

Microbial interactions often critically depend on the rate of physical cell-cell or cell-resourceencounters. In a liquid environment, many prominent examples include encounters amongphytoplankton in the ocean that lead to the formation of marine snow, the formation of living aggregates by cyanobacteria, bacterial chemotaxis towards leaky phytoplankton, and horizontal gene transfer between bacteria. Microscale encounters are nearly always quantified as encounters between inanimate spheres, borrowing from the physics of gases, coagulating colloids, and rain formation. However, these classical approaches often fail to account for important traits of microorganisms, such as cell elongation, motility, or gradient sensing. Even more importantly, experimental assays typically do not control cell-cell encounters. In my talk, I will outline how more realistic models of encounters at the microscale can contribute to our understanding of fundamental ecological processes controlled by microbes, from active aggregation through chemotaxis to gene exchanges. I will close by presenting our recent experimental evidence that encounters driven by fluid shear strongly control the rates of horizontal gene transfer between bacteria.

We warmly welcome everyone to attend the talk and the Soft Matter Coffee Break after the seminar, held in room 2.63 (2nd floor).

Maria Ekiel-Jeżewska
Maciej Lisicki
Piotr Szymczak
Panagiotis Theodorakis

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