Related papers: Thermodynamically Driven Assemblies and Liquid-liq…
Membraneless droplets or liquid condensates formed via liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) play a pivotal role in cell biology and hold potential for biomedical engineering. While membraneless droplets are often studied in the context of…
We consider a phenomenological continuum model for an active nematic fluid and show a universal, model independent, instability which renders the homogeneous nematic state unstable to order fluctuations. Using numerical and analytic tools…
The thermodynamic (TD) properties of biological membranes play a central role for living systems. It has been suggested, for instance, that nonlinear pulses such as action potentials (APs) can only exist if the membrane state is in vicinity…
We study a generic model of self-assembling chains which can branch and form networks with branching points (junctions) of arbitrary functionality. The physical realizations include physical gels, wormlike micells, dipolar fluids and…
The hallmark feature of polymorphic systems is their ability to assemble into many possible structures at the same thermodynamic state. Designer polymorphic materials can in principle be engineered via programmable self-assembly, but the…
Self-assembly processes in biological and synthetic biomolecular systems are often governed by the spatial separation of biochemical processes. While previous work has focused on optimizing self-assembly through fine-tuned reaction…
Microelectronic morphogenesis is the creation and maintenance of complex functional structures by microelectronic information within shape-changing materials. Only recently has in-built information technology begun to be used to reshape…
We present a generic framework for modelling three-dimensional deformable shells of active matter that captures the orientational dynamics of the active particles and hydrodynamic interactions on the shell and with the surrounding…
We present a thermodynamically consistent model describing the dynamics of a multi-component mixture where one enzyme component catalyzes a reaction between other components. We find that the catalytic activity alone can induce phase…
Active matter is rapidly becoming a key paradigm of out-of-equilibrium soft matter exhibiting complex collective phenomena, yet the thermodynamics of such systems remain poorly understood. In this letter we study the nonequilbrium…
In this paper, we use the cell dynamics method to study the dynamics of phase transformation when three phases exist. The system we study is a two-dimensional system. The system is able to achieve three phases coexistence, which for…
Understanding the (de)mixing behavior of multicomponent lipid bilayers is an important step towards unraveling the nature of spatial composition heterogeneities in cellular membranes and their role in biological function. We use…
Understanding the rules underlying organismal development is a major unsolved problem in biology. Each cell in a developing organism responds to signals in its local environment by dividing, excreting, consuming, or reorganizing, yet how…
Recent 3D organ reconstitution studies show that a group of stem cells can establish a body axis and acquire different fates in a spatially organized manner. How such symmetry breaking happens in the absence of external spatial cues, and…
Phase separation of various materials has been studied for one and a half centuries. In the last two decades, phase separation of proteins and nucleic acids has received enormous attention, due its relevance to cellular functions. However,…
Bacterial microcompartments are large, roughly icosahedral shells that assemble around enzymes and reactants involved in certain metabolic pathways in bacteria. Motivated by microcompartment assembly, we use coarse-grained computational and…
The past few years have seen many advances in our understanding of the dynamics of polymeric fluids. These include improvements on the successful reptation theory; an emerging molecular theory of semiflexible chain dynamics; and an…
In biology, cells undergo deformations under the action of flow caused by the fluid surrounding them. These flows lead to shape changes and instabilities that have been explored in detail for single component vesicles. However, cell…
We study the problem of phase separation in systems with a positive definite order parameter, and in particular, in systems with absorbing states. Owing to the presence of a single minimum in the free energy driving the relaxation kinetics,…
Some microorganisms, such as spermatozoa, synchronize their flagella when swimming in close proximity. Using a simplified model (two infinite, parallel, two-dimensional waving sheets), we show that phase-locking arises from hydrodynamics…