Alex Groisman

Elastic turbulence in a polymer solution flow

Turbulence is a ubiquitous phenomenon that is not fully understood. It is known that the flow of a simple, newtonian fluid is likely to be turbulent when the Reynolds number is large (typically when the velocity is high, the viscosity is low and the size of the tank is large). In contrast, viscoelastic fluids such as solutions of flexible long-chain polymers have nonlinear mechanical properties and therefore may be expected to behave differently. Here we observe experimentally that the flow of a sufficiently elastic polymer solution can become irregular even at low velocity, high viscosity and in a small tank. The fluid motion is excited in a broad range of spatial and temporal scales, and we observe an increase in the flow resistance by a factor of about twenty. Although the Reynolds number may be arbitrarily low, the observed flow has all the main features of developed turbulence. A comparable state of turbulent flow for a newtonian fluid in a pipe would have a Reynolds number as high as 105 (refs 1, 2). The low Reynolds number or ‘elastic’ turbulence that we observe is accompanied by significant stretching of the polymer molecules, resulting in an increase in the elastic stresses of up to two orders of magnitude.

MAPK-mediated bimodal gene expression and adaptive gradient sensing in yeast.

The mating pathway in Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been the focus of considerable research effort, yet many quantitative aspects of its regulation still remain unknown. Using an integrated approach involving experiments in microfluidic chips and computational modelling, we studied gene expression and phenotypic changes associated with the mating response under well-defined pheromone gradients. Here we report a combination of switch-like and graded pathway responses leading to stochastic phenotype determination in a specific range of pheromone concentrations. Furthermore, we show that these responses are critically dependent on mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK)-mediated regulation of the activity of the pheromone-response-specific transcription factor, Ste12, as well as on the autoregulatory feedback of Ste12. In particular, both the switch-like characteristics and sensitivity of gene expression in shmooing cells to pheromone concentration were significantly diminished in cells lacking Kss1, one of the MAP kinases activated in the mating pathway. In addition, the dynamic range of gradient sensing of Kss1-deficient cells was reduced compared with wild type. We thus provide unsuspected functional significance for this kinase in regulation of the mating response.

A microfluidic chemostat for experiments with bacterial and yeast cells

Bacteria and yeast frequently exist as populations capable of reaching extremely high cell densities. With conventional culturing techniques, however, cell proliferation and ultimate density are limited by depletion of nutrients and accumulation of metabolites in the medium. Here we describe design and operation of microfabricated elastomer chips, in which chemostatic conditions are maintained for bacterial and yeast colonies growing in an array of shallow microscopic chambers. Walls of the chambers are impassable for the cells, but allow diffusion of chemicals. Thus, the chemical contents of the chambers are maintained virtually identical to those of the nearby channels with continuous flowthrough of a dynamically defined medium. We demonstrate growth of cell cultures to densely packed ensembles that proceeds exponentially in a temperature-dependent fashion, and we use the devices to monitor colony growth from a single cell and to analyze the cell response to an exogenously added autoinducer.

Efficient mixing at low Reynolds numbers using polymer additives

Mixing in fluids is a rapidly developing area in fluid mechanics, being an important industrial and environmental problem. The mixing of liquids at low Reynolds numbers is usually quite weak in simple flows, and it requires special devices to be efficient. Recently, the problem of mixing was solved analytically for a simple case of random flow, known as the Batchelor regime. Here we demonstrate experimentally that very viscous liquids containing a small amount of high-molecular-weight polymers can be mixed quite efficiently at very low Reynolds numbers, for a simple flow in a curved channel. A polymer concentration of only 0.001% suffices. The presence of the polymers leads to an elastic instability and to irregular flow, with velocity spectra corresponding to the Batchelor regime. Our detailed observations of the mixing in this regime enable us to confirm several important theoretical predictions: the probability distributions of the concentration exhibit exponential tails, moments of the distribution decay exponentially along the flow, and the spatial correlation function of concentration decays logarithmically.

An Experimental Study of Cracking Induced by Desiccation

Experiments on cracking in drying a coffee-water mixture were carried out, in order to model mud cracks occurring in nature. The results show that the main source of stresses required for cracking is the friction at the bottom of the container, in which the mixture is kept. There is a linear relation between the scale of the crack pattern and the thickness of the mixture layer. Statistics of the angles between joining cracks is presented. A general mechanism of mud cracks formation is proposed.

Two-dimensional hydrodynamic focusing in a simple microfluidic device

Two-dimensional flow focusing in pressure-driven flow is demonstrated in a microfluidic device made of a single cast of a silicon elastomer. A stream injected into the device is shaped to a variety of rectangular profiles. A flow of particles is focused into a thin layer with homogeneous velocity. A blob of dye injected into a microchannel is transported over a long distance with minimal dispersion. The device can be integrated into lab-on-a-chip systems and used as a low-cost flow cytometry chamber.

Elastic turbulence in curvilinear flows of polymer solutions.

Following our first report (A Groisman and V Steinberg 2000 Nature 405 53), we present an extended account of experimental observations of elasticity-induced turbulence in three different systems: a swirling flow between two plates, a Couette–Taylor (CT) flow between two cylinders, and a flow in a curvilinear channel (Dean flow). All three set-ups had a high ratio of the width of the region available for flow to the radius of curvature of the streamlines. The experiments were carried out with dilute solutions of high-molecular-weight polyacrylamide in concentrated sugar syrups. High polymer relaxation time and solution viscosity ensured prevalence of non-linear elastic effects over inertial non-linearity, and development of purely elastic instabilities at low Reynolds number (Re) in all three flows. Above the elastic instability threshold, flows in all three systems exhibit features of developed turbulence. They include: (i) randomly fluctuating fluid motion excited in a broad range of spatial and temporal scales and (ii) significant increase in the rates of momentum and mass transfer (compared with those expected for a steady flow with a smooth velocity profile). Phenomenology, driving mechanisms and parameter dependence of the elastic turbulence are compared with those of the conventional high-Re hydrodynamic turbulence in Newtonian fluids. Some similarities as well as multiple principal differences were found. In two out of three systems (swirling flow between two plates and flow in the curvilinear channel), power spectra of velocity fluctuations decayed rather quickly, following power laws with exponents of about −3.5. It suggests that, being random in time, the flow is rather smooth in space, in the sense that the main contribution to deformation and mixing (and, possibly, elastic energy) is coming from flow at the largest scale of the system. This situation, random in time and smooth in space, is analogous to flows at small scales (below the Kolmogorov dissipation scale) in high-Re turbulence.

Self-Organization in High-Density Bacterial Colonies: Efficient Crowd Control

Colonies of bacterial cells can display complex collective dynamics, frequently culminating in the formation of biofilms and other ordered super-structures. Recent studies suggest that to cope with local environmental challenges, bacterial cells can actively seek out small chambers or cavities and assemble there, engaging in quorum sensing behavior. By using a novel microfluidic device, we showed that within chambers of distinct shapes and sizes allowing continuous cell escape, bacterial colonies can gradually self-organize. The directions of orientation of cells, their growth, and collective motion are mutually correlated and dictated by the chamber walls and locations of chamber exits. The ultimate highly organized steady state is conducive to a more-organized escape of cells from the chambers and increased access of nutrients into and evacuation of waste out of the colonies. Using a computational model, we suggest that the lengths of the cells might be optimized to maximize self-organization while minimizing the potential for stampede-like exit blockage. The self-organization described here may be crucial for the early stage of the organization of high-density bacterial colonies populating small, physically confined growth niches. It suggests that this phenomenon can play a critical role in bacterial biofilm initiation and development of other complex multicellular bacterial super-structures, including those implicated in infectious diseases.

Microfluidic devices for studies of shear-dependent platelet adhesion

Adhesion of platelets to blood vessel walls is a shear stress dependent process that promotes arrest of bleeding and is mediated by the interaction of receptors expressed on platelets with various extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins that may become exposed upon vascular injury. Studies of dynamic platelet adhesion to ECM-coated substrates in conventional flow chambers require substantial fluid volumes and are difficult to perform with blood samples from a single laboratory mouse. Here we report dynamic platelet adhesion assays in two new microfluidic devices made of PDMS. Small cross-sections of the flow chambers in the devices reduce the blood volume requirements to <100 microl per assay, making the assays compatible with samples of whole blood obtained from a single mouse. One device has an array of 8 flow chambers with shear stress varying by a factor of 1.93 between adjacent chambers, covering a 100-fold range from low venous to arterial. The other device allows simultaneous high-resolution fluorescence imaging of dynamic adhesion of platelets from two different blood samples. Adhesion of platelets in the devices to three common ECM substrate coatings was verified to conform with published results. The devices were subsequently used to study the roles of extracellular and intracellular domains of integrin alphaIIbbeta3, a platelet receptor that is a central mediator of platelet aggregation and thrombus formation. The study involved wild-type mice and two genetically modified mouse strains and showed that the absence of the integrin impaired adhesion at all shear stresses, whereas a mutation in its intracellular domain reduced the adhesion only at moderate and high stresses. Because of small sample volumes required, the devices could be employed in research with genetically-modified model organisms and for adhesion tests in clinical settings with blood from neonates.

Femtosecond laser-drilled capillary integrated into a microfluidic device

Recent growth in microfluidic technology is, to a large extent, driven by soft lithography, a high-throughput fabrication technique where polymer materials, such as poly(dimethyl) siloxane (PDMS), are molded to form microscopic channel networks. Nevertheless, the channel architectures that can be obtained by molding are limited. We address this limitation by using femtosecond laser micromachining to add unmoldable features to the microfluidic devices. We apply laser ablation to drill microcapillaries, with diameters as small as 0.5μm and aspect ratios as high as 800:1, in the walls of molded PDMS channels. Finally, we use a laser-drilled microcapillary to trap a polystyrene bead by suction and hold it against a shear flow.