Related papers: Modelling spatial constraints and scaling effects …
The interaction of phase-separating systems with chemical reactions is of great interest in various contexts, from biology to material science. In biology, phase separation is thought to be the driving force behind the formation of…
Biomolecular condensates in cells are often rich in catalytically-active enzymes. This is particularly true in the case of the large enzymatic complexes known as metabolons, which contain different enzymes that participate in the same…
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…
Liquid-liquid phase separation is now recognized as a common mechanism for regulating enzyme activity in cells. Insights from studies in cells are complemented by in vitro studies aimed at developing better understanding of mechanisms…
Biomolecular condensates play essential roles in cellular processes, and recent efforts have focused on understanding their assembly and rational design principles. In this study, we have employed an explicit-solvent minimal statistical…
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…
One of the hypothesized functions of biomolecular condensates is to act as chemical reactors, where chemical reactions can be modulated, i.e. accelerated or slowed down, while substrate molecules enter and products exit from the condensate.…
The development of high-efficiency porous catalyst membranes critically depends on our understanding of where the majority of the chemical conversions occur within the porous structure. This requires mapping of chemical reactions and mass…
Demixing of multicomponent biomolecular systems via liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) has emerged as a potentially unifying mechanism governing the formation of several membrane-less intracellular organelles ("condensates"), both in the…
Catalysis, the acceleration of product formation by a substance that is left unchanged, typically results from multiple elementary processes, including diffusion of the reactants toward the catalyst, chemical steps, and release of the…
We study chemical oscillators in the presence of phase separation. By imposing timescale separation between slow reactions and fast diffusion, we define a dynamics at phase equilibrium for the relevant degrees of freedom. We demonstrate…
Phase separation is the thermodynamic process that explains how droplets form in multicomponent fluids. These droplets can provide controlled compartments to localize chemical reactions, and reactions can also affect the droplets' dynamics.…
Biological mixtures such as the cytosol may consist of thousands of distinct components. There is now a substantial body of evidence showing that, under physiological conditions, intracellular mixtures can phase separate into spatially…
Chemical reactions that couple to systems that phase separate have been implicated in diverse contexts from biology to materials science. However, how a particular set of chemical reactions (chemical reaction network, CRN) would affect the…
The self-organization of proteins into enriched compartments and the formation of complex patterns are crucial processes for life on the cellular level. Liquid-liquid phase separation is one mechanism for forming such enriched compartments.…
Biomolecular condensates provide distinct chemical environments, which control various cellular processes. The diffusive dynamics and chemical kinetics inside phase-separated condensates can be studied experimentally by fluorescently…
Motility-induced phase separation (MIPS) is a well-studied nonequilibrium collective phenomenon observed in active particles. Recently, there has been growing interest in how coupling the self-propulsion of active particles to chemical…
Elastic interactions arising from a difference of lattice spacing between two coherent phases can have a strong influence on the phase separation (coarsening) of alloys. If the elastic moduli are different in the two phases, the elastic…
Inspired by recent experiments, we present a phase-field model of microphase separation in an elastomer swollen with a solvent. The imbalance between the molecular scale of demixing and the mesoscopic scale beyond which elasticity operates…
Spatially uniform electric fields have been used to induce instabilities in liquids and polymers, and to orient and deform ordered phases of block-copolymers. Here we discuss the demixing phase transition occurring in liquid mixtures when…