DIEP seminar by Hermes Bloomfield-Gadêlha
Patterns, Robots, and Tiny Motors: Exploring the Mystery of Self-Organization in Cilia and Flagella Beating
This talk presents updates from Polymaths Lab, Bristol, on how axonemal motors self-organize to drive cilia and flagella beating. We explore how 3D structures shape, and sometimes suppress, planar beating, and what this means for swimming cells. We created a simple yet precise reaction-diffusion model (Cass & Gadelha, Nature Communications 2023), inspired by classic chemistry where patterns emerge over time and space—like animal skin patterns. Here, the pattern is the flagellum’s rhythmic wave, driven by sliding molecular motors. Unlike most models, ours doesn’t need the flagellum to sense the fluid around it. Instead, internal friction alone can drive the wave, matching experimental beating patterns of bull sperm and Chlamydomonas algae. This suggests a universal mechanism for flagellar movement in watery environments, critical for aquatic organisms. A 3D multi-physics model further shows that planarity emerges from teams of molecular motors competing inside the axoneme. 3D microscopy reveals sperm create counter-rotating vortices and spin like tops to swim straight, even with asymmetric beats (Ren & Gadelha, Advanced Science 2024). We also showcase new robotics, lab-on-chip, and imaging tools developed at Polymaths Lab to explore complex systems, including how body design and environmental interaction enable embodied intelligence, as in octopus-like suction circuits with self-emergent behaviours (Yue et al. Science Robotics 2025).
Hermes Bloomfield-Gadêlha is a mathematician at the University of Bristol, where he is part of the Department of Engineering Mathematics and the Bristol Robotics Laboratory. Originally from Brazil, Hermes studied at Oxford and Cambridge, and has held academic positions at York and Merton College, Oxford. His work combines mathematics with experimental science to understand movement and pattern formation in biological and physical systems. He currently leads the Polymaths Lab, which is known for interdisciplinary research and public science engagement.
The reaction-diffusion basis of animated patterns in eukaryotic flagella, JF Cass & H Bloomfield-Gadêlha, Nature Communications 14, 5638 (2023)
Swimming by spinning: spinning-top type rotations regularize sperm swimming into persistently progressive paths in 3D, X Ren & H Bloomfield-Gadêlha, Advanced Science 2406143 (2024)
The three-dimensional coarse-graining formulation of interacting elastohydrodynamic filaments and multi-body microhydrodynamics, P Fuchter & H Bloomfield-Gadêlha Journal of the Royal Society Interface 20, 20230021 (2023).
Fluid flow reconstruction around a free-swimming sperm in 3D, X Ren, P Hernández-Herrera, F Montoya, A Darszon, G Corkidi & H Bloomfield-Gadêlha (arXiv)
Skeletal actomyosin geometry orchestrates motor cooperativity as a time-variable network, B Warmington, J Rossiter & H Bloomfield-Gadêlha (arXiv)
Embodying soft robots with octopus-inspired hierarchical suction intelligence, T Yue, C Lu, K Tang, Q Qi, Z Lu, L Yi Lee, H Bloomfield-Gadȇlha & J Rossiter, Science Robotics 10, eadr4264 (2025)
If you wish to attend this seminar online, please send an email to f.a.nobregasantos@uva.nl to receive the zoom-link.