Related papers: Enzyme-enriched condensates show self-propulsion, …
We examine the stochastic dynamics of two enzymes that are mechanically coupled to each other, e.g., through an elastic substrate or a fluid medium. The enzymes undergo conformational changes during their catalytic cycle, which itself is…
Biomolecular condensates self-assemble when proteins and nucleic acids spontaneously demix to form droplets within the crowded intracellular milieu. This simple mechanism underlies the formation of a wide variety of membraneless…
We study phase-separating fluid mixtures as they demix in the presence of chemical reactions that maintain them away from thermodynamic equilibrium. We show that in such chemically active emulsions the interplay of chemical reactions, phase…
The effect of conformational fluctuations of modular macromolecules, such as enzymes, on their diffusion properties is addressed using a simple generic model of an asymmetric dumbbell made of two hydrodynamically coupled subunits. It is…
Flow transport in confined spaces is ubiquitous in technological processes, ranging from separation and purification of pharmaceutical ingredients by microporous membranes and drug delivery in biomedical treatment to chemical and biomass…
Self-propelled colloidal particles exhibit rich non-equilibrium phenomena and have promising applications in fields such as drug delivery and self-assembled active materials. Previous experimental and theoretical studies have shown that…
Enzymes have been recently found to exhibit enhanced diffusion due to their catalytic activities. A recent experiment [C. Riedel et al., Nature 517, 227 (2015)] has found evidence that suggests this phenomenon might be controlled by the…
We show that spontaneous density segregation in dense systems of aligning circle swimmers is a condensation phenomenon at odds with the phase separation scenarios usually observed in two-dimensional active matter. The condensates, which…
Enhanced diffusion and anti-chemotaxis of enzymes have been reported in several experiments in the last decade, opening up entirely new avenues of research in the bio-nanosciences both at the applied and fundamental level. Here, we…
We examine a mechanism of locomotion of active particles whose surface is uniformly coated with mobile enzymes. The enzymes catalyze a reaction that drives phoretic flows but their homogeneous distribution forbids locomotion by symmetry. We…
Motile bacteria can migrate along chemical gradients in a process known as chemotaxis. When exposed to uniform environmental stress, Escherichia coli cells coordinate their chemotactic responses to form millimeter-sized condensates…
Non-equilibrium self-organized patterns formed by particles interacting through competing range interaction are driven over a substrate by an external force. We show that, with increasing driving force, the pre-existed static patterns…
The formation of (bio)molecular condensates via liquid-liquid phase separation in cells has received increasing attention, as these coacervates play important functional and regulatory roles within biological systems. However, the majority…
Recent studies of the phase diagram for spherical, purely repulsive, active particles established the existence of a transition from a liquid-like to a solid-like phase analogous to the one observed in colloidal systems at thermal…
Coarsening, the process where larger structures grow at the expense of smaller ones, is a fundamental aspect of multiphase systems. The cell cytoplasm exemplifies an out-of-equilibrium multiphase system, where phase-separated condensates…
Enzymes are nano-scale machines that have evolved to drive chemical reactions out of equilibrium in the right place at the right time. Given the complexity and specificity of enzymatic function, bottom-up design of enzymes presents a…
Phase-separated liquid condensates can spatially organize and thereby regulate chemical processes. However, the physicochemical mechanisms underlying such regulation remain elusive as the intramolecular interactions responsible for phase…
Many active biological particles, such as swimming microorganisms or motor-proteins, do work on their environment by going though a periodic sequence of shapes. Interactions between particles can lead to the phase-synchronization of their…
At sufficiently high concentrations, motile bacteria suspended in fluids exhibit a range of ordered and disordered collective motions. Here we explore the combined effects of confinement, periodicity and curvature induced by the active…
Experiments show that the movement of eukaryotic cells is regulated by a process of phase separation of two competing enzymes on the cell membrane, that effectively amplifies shallow external gradients of chemical attractant. Notably, the…