Related papers: Solvent constraints for biopolymer folding and evo…

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…

The article provides a brief general introduction into the concepts of scaling, universality, and crossover scaling, plus the blob concept that provides an intuitive picture of crossover phenomena. We present the most important static and…

Spontaneous self-assembly in molecular systems is a fundamental route to both biological and engineered soft matter. Simple micellisation, emulsion formation, and polymer mixing principles are well understood. However, the principles behind…

Many microorganisms live and evolve in complex fluids. Examples include mammalian spermatozoa in cervical mucus, worms (e.g., \textit{C. elegans}) in wet soil, and bacteria (e.g., \textit{H. pylori}) in our stomach lining. Due to the…

We present a detailed description of biopolymer translocation through a nanopore in the presence of a solvent, using an innovative multi-scale methodology which treats the biopolymer at the microscopic scale as combined with a…

We investigate the process of biopolymer translocation through a narrow pore using a multiscale approach which explicitly accounts for the hydrodynamic interactions of the molecule with the surrounding solvent. The simulations confirm that…

Traditionally, solubility and mixing belong to the realm of chemistry and material sciences and many standard textbooks on physical chemistry treat this problem, usually within the scope of thermodynamics. Here apart from thermodynamics we…

We study a mutually coupled mesoscopic-macroscopic-shell system of equations modeling a dilute incompressible polymer fluid which is evolving and interacting with a flexible shell of Koiter type. The polymer constitutes a solvent-solute…

The hydrophobic effect is the dominant force which drives a protein towards its native state, but its physics has not been thoroughly understood yet. We introduce an exactly solvable model of the solvation of non-polar molecules in water,…

Studying exoplanet atmospheres is essential for assessing their potential to host liquid water and their capacity to support life (their habitability). Each atmosphere uniquely influences the likelihood of surface liquid water, defining the…

Standard definitions of habitability assume that life requires the presence of planetary gravity wells to stabilize liquid water and regulate surface temperature. Here the consequences of relaxing this assumption are evaluated. Temperature,…

One of the unique features associated with the Earth is that the fraction of its surface covered by land is comparable to that spanned by its oceans and other water bodies. Here, we investigate how extraterrestrial biospheres depend on the…

Apparent biodiversity on earth exists only if we compare different species separated from their environments. Meanwhile coexisting species have to be identical in terms of energetic interactions. Consider the biosphere as a network of…

Exoplanetary science continues to excite and surprise with its rich diversity. We discuss here some key aspects potentially influencing the range of exoplanetary terrestrial-type atmospheres which could exist in nature. We are motivated by…

In suitable environments, proteins, nucleic acids and certain synthetic polymers fold into unique conformations. This work shows that it is possible to construct lattice models of foldable heteropolymers by expressing the energy only in…

Active matter agents consume internal energy or extract energy from the environment for locomotion and force generation. Already rather generic models, such as ensembles of active Brownian particles, exhibit phenomena, which are absent at…

The interaction between charged objects in solution is generally expected to recapitulate two central principles of electromagnetics: (i) like-charged objects repel, and (ii) they do so regardless of the sign of their electrical charge.…

Organisms leave a distinctive chemical signature in their environment because they synthesize those molecules that maximize their fitness. As a result, the relative concentrations of related chemical monomers in life-bearing environmental…

The development of a coherent conceptual basis for the treatment of non-linear microscopic phenomena, such as, hydrodynamic interaction, finite extensibility, excluded volume and internal viscosity, in molecular theories of dilute polymer…

At the cutting edge of materials science, matter is designed to self-organize into structures that perform a wide range of functions. The past two decades have witnessed major innovations in the versatility of building blocks, ranging from…