Related papers: Non-Equilibrium Living Polymers
Random heteropolymers do not display the typical equilibrium properties of globular proteins, but are the starting point to understand the physics of proteins and, in particular, to describe their non-native states. So far, they have been…
Life is commonly described as a self-organized, far-from-equilibrium process that maintains internal order by consuming free energy and exporting entropy. This thermodynamic view underlies diverse theoretical frameworks -- from autopoiesis…
In this work we survey selected theoretical developments for models of deposition of extended particles, with and without surface diffusion, on linear and planar substrates, of interest in colloid, polymer, and certain biological systems.
Recent experimental and theoretical approaches have attempted to quantify the physical organization (compaction and geometry) of the bacterial chromosome with its complement of proteins (the nucleoid). The genomic DNA exists in a complex…
Phase separation routinely occurs in both living and synthetic systems. These phases are often complex and distinguished by features including crystallinity, nematic order, and a host of other nonconserved order parameters. For systems at…
We analyze the nonequilibrium dynamics of single inextensible semiflexible biopolymers as stretching forces are applied at the ends. Based on different (contradicting) heuristic arguments, various scaling laws have been proposed for the…
The possibility that evolutionary forces -- together with a few fundamental factors such as thermodynamic constraints, specific computational features enabling information processing, and ecological processes -- might constrain the logic of…
The use of polymer-based surfactants in the double-emulsion (water/oil/water, W/O/W) solvent-evaporation technique is becoming a widespread strategy for preparing biocompatible and biodegradable polymeric nanoparticles (NPs) loaded with…
Biological nanomachines are nanometer-size macromolecular complexes that catalyze chemical reactions in the presence of substrate molecules. The catalytic functions carried out by such nanomachines in the cytoplasm, and biological membranes…
Equilibrium self-assembly and conventional materials processing techniques fall far short of mimicking dynamic self-actuating processes that are commonplace throughout biology. To bridge the gap between living and synthetic matter, we study…
There has been on-going philosophical debate on whether artificial life models, also known as digital organisms, are truly alive. The main difficulty appears to be finding an encompassing and definite definition of life. By examining…
We study a one-dimensional lattice of $N$ sites each occupied by a mathematical "polymer," that is, is a binary random sequence of arbitrary length $n$, or equivalently, a rooted path of $n$ links on an infinite binary tree. The average…
The interaction of flexible polymers with fluid flows leads to a number of intriguing phenomena observed in laboratory experiments, namely drag reduction, elastic turbulence and heat transport modification in natural convection, and is one…
Living systems are capable of locomotion, reconfiguration, and replication. To perform these tasks, cells spatiotemporally coordinate the interactions of force-generating, "active" molecules that create and manipulate non-equilibrium…
Phase separation has emerged as an essential concept for the spatial organization inside biological cells. However, despite the clear relevance to virtually all physiological functions, we understand surprisingly little about what phases…
Active matter has played a pivotal role in advancing our understanding of non-equilibrium systems, leading to a fundamental shift in the study of biophysical phenomena. The foundation of active matter research is built on assumptions…
The objective of the paper is to identify laws and mechanisms that allow the creation of more order from disorder using natural means i.e., without the help of conscious beings. While this is not possible for the collection of all dynamical…
Semiflexible polymers form central structures in biological material. Modeling approaches usually neglect influences of polymer-specific molecular features aiming to describe semiflexible polymers universally. Here, we investigate the…
An off-lattice Monte Carlo algorithm for solutions of equilibrium polymers (EP) is proposed. At low and moderate densities this is shown to reproduce faithfully the (static) properties found recently for flexible linear EP using a lattice…
A fundamental problem in protobiological dynamics is to understand how chemically generated polymers can form persistent sequence distributions before the emergence of replication. We study deterministic polymer growth in which each finite…