Related papers: Non-Equilibrium Living Polymers
A simple model of a polymer is considered: a chain of (different) point masses, connected by harmonic springs, embedded in two dimensional space. In order to determine conditions for existence and stability of breather excitations, the…
Understanding non-equilibrium phenomena, such as growth, and connecting them to equilibrium phase behavior is a major challenge, in particular for complex multicomponent materials. We use X-ray reflectivity to determine the surface…
Engineering simple, artificial models of living cells allows synthetic biologists to study cellular functions under well-controlled conditions. Reconstituting multicellular behaviors with synthetic cell-mimics is still a challenge because…
While modern physics and biology satisfactorily explain the passage from the Big Bang to the formation of Earth and the first cells to present-day life, respectively, the origins of biochemical life still remain an open question. Since…
A theory is presented for the binding of small molecules such as surfactants to semiflexible polymers. The persistence length is assumed to be large compared to the monomer size but much smaller than the total chain length. Such polymers…
We present a generic coarse-grained model to describe molecular motors acting on polymer substrates, mimicking, for example, RNA polymerase on DNA or kinesin on microtubules. The polymer is modeled as a connected chain of beads; motors are…
One thing that discriminates living things from inanimate matter is their ability to generate similarly complex or non-random architectures in a large abundance. From DNA sequences to folded protein structures, living cells, microbial…
We review the depinning and nonequilibrium phases of collectively interacting particle systems driven over random or periodic substrates. This type of system is relevant to vortices in type-II superconductors, sliding charge density waves,…
The design of a biodegradable, environmentally friendly surfactant is carried out, taking the structure of a known surfactant that lacks these qualities as the starting point, using mesoscopic computer simulations. The newly designed…
Dynamics is central to living systems. In the last two decades, experiments have revealed that the dynamics in diverse biological systems - from intracellular cytoplasm to cellular and organismal aggregates - are remarkably similar to that…
Interfacing artificial functional materials and living neuronal tissues is at the forefront of bio-nano-technology. Attempts have been so far based onto microscale processing of metals and inorganic semiconductors as electrodes or…
Nonequilibrium dynamics of biomembranes with active inclusions is considered. The inclusions represent protein molecules which perform cyclic internal conformational motions driven by the energy brought with ATP ligands. As protein…
Recently, long and slender living worms have garnered significant interest because of their impressive ability to exhibit diverse emergent behaviors in highly entangled physical and topological conditions. These worms can form an active…
Biological systems exploit self-assembly to create complex structures whose arrangements are finely controlled from molecular to mesoscopic level. Herein we report an example of using fully synthetic systems that mimic two levels of…
Loop formation in long molecules occurs many places in nature, from solutions of carbon nanotubes to polymers inside a cell. In this article, we review theoretical studies of the static and dynamic properties of polymer loops. For example,…
We study the nonequilibrium dynamics of line liquids as realized in the nonlinear motion of flux lines of a superconductor driven by an applied electric current. Our analysis suggests a transition in the dynamics of the lines from a smooth,…
Polymers are a primary building block in many biomaterials, often interacting with anisotropic backgrounds. While previous studies have considered polymer dynamics within nematic solvents, rarely are the the effects of anisotropic viscosity…
Keywords: nonequilibirum phenomena; diffusion in confined systems; dynamics and relaxation in confined systems; entropic transport in confined systems; ion and polymer translocation; forces induced by fluctuations; confined active mater;…
To describe the nonequilibrium states of the system, a new thermodynamic parameter - system lifetime - is introduced. Statistical distributions that describe the behavior of energy and lifetime are recorded. Entropy and obtained…
Partitioning of (bio)materials in polymeric mixtures is a key phenomenon both in cellular environments, as well as in industrial applications. In cells, several macromolecules are suspended within different biomolecular phases. On the other…