Paper on the mechanics of motility of a family of unicellular organisms called euglenids

Dear colleagues,

I wanted to draw your attention to a paper published last year in PNAS

http://www.pnas.org/content/109/44/17874

where we analyze physical aspects of how euglenoids move

http://euglena.msu.edu/public_html/Movies/Eutreptiella/eutrep2.mov

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKDEqILudC0&feature=youtu.be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TwAaPO9q-4

These graceful movements are mediated by the active deformation of the cell envelope through simple in-plane shear. Thus, it relates to topics studied by the mechanics community, including non-Euclidean plates. I am not aware of another system that uses this shape morphing principle. Although in this paper we analyze just axisymmetric motions, euglenids execute more general deformations, which can also be achieved by simple shear.