Related papers: A minimal model for liquid-liquid phase separation…
In a companion paper, we put forth a thermodynamic model for complex formation via a chemical reaction involving multiple macromolecular species, which may subsequently undergo liquid-liquid phase separation and a further transition into a…
Phase separation under non-equilibrium conditions is exploited by biological cells to organize their cytoplasm but remains poorly understood as a physical phenomenon. Here, we study a ternary fluid model in which phase-separating molecules…
Phase separation and transitions among different molecular states are ubiquitous in living cells. Such transitions can be governed by local equilibrium thermodynamics or by active processes controlled by biological fuel. It remains largely…
Motivated by intracellular phase separation, we theoretically investigate how molecular orientation and multi-component nature affect phase behavior. We construct a minimal model for a ternary mixture composed of isotropic (I), anisotropic…
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…
The phase behavior is investigated for systems composed of a large number of macromolecular components N, with N greater or equal to 2. Liquid-liquid phase separation is modelled using a virial expansion up to the second order of the…
Liquid polyamorphism is the intriguing possibility for a single component substance to exist in multiple liquid phases. We propose a minimal model for this phenomenon. Starting with a binary lattice model with critical azeotropy and…
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…
Materials undergoing both phase separation and chemical reactions (defined here as all processes that change particle type or number) form an important class of non-equilibrium systems. Examples range from suspensions of self-propelled…
We propose a model describing the phase behavior of two-component membranes consisting of binary mixtures of electrically charged and neutral lipids. We take into account the structural phase transition (main-transition) of the hydrocarbon…
Stimulated by experimental evidence in the field of solution--born thin films, we study the morphology formation in a three state lattice system subjected to the evaporation of one component. The practical problem that we address is the…
A model for a monolayer of two types of particles spontaneously forming ordered patterns is studied by a mesoscopic theory and by MC simulations. We assume hard-cores of the same size for both components, short-range attraction long-range…
In an effort to understand ``rafts'' in biological membranes, we propose phenomenological models for saturated and unsaturated lipid mixtures, and lipid-cholesterol mixtures. We consider simple couplings between the local composition and…
If a binary liquid mixture, composed of two alternative species with equal amounts, is quenched from a high temperature to a low temperature, below the critical point of demixing, then the mixture will phase separate through a process known…
Our interest lies in exploring the ability of a coupled nonlocal system of two quasilinear parabolic partial differential equations to produce phase separation patterns. The obtained patterns are referred here as morphologies. Our target…
Lateral microsegregation in a monolayer of a binary mixture of particles or macromolecules is studied by MD simulations in a generic model with the interacting potentials inspired by effective interactions in biological or soft-matter…
We present a phenomenological theory for the phase behavior of ternary mixtures of cholesterol and saturated and unsaturated lipids, one which describes both liquid and gel phases, and illuminates the mechanism of the behavior. In a binary…
We employ a molecular model to study a ternary mixture of saturated lipid, with tails of sixteen carbons, a mono unsaturated lipid with tails of eighteen carbons, and cholesterol. The model, solved within mean-field theory, produces several…
We present a minimal model to study liquid phase separation in a fixed pH ensemble. The model describes a mixture composed of macromolecules that exist in three different charge states and have a tendency to phase separate. We introduce the…
When a polymer solution undergoes viscoelastic phase separation, the polymer-rich phase forms a network-like structure even if it is a minor phase. This unique feature is induced by polymer dynamics, which are constrained by the temporal…