Related papers: Theory of the center-of-mass diffusion and viscosi…
Biomolecular condensates help organize the cell cytoplasm and nucleoplasm into spatial compartments with different chemical compositions. A key feature of such compositional patterning is the local enrichment of enzymatically active…
A suspension of swimming microorganisms often generates a large-scale convective pattern known as bioconvection. In contrast to the thermal Rayleigh-Benard system, recent experimental studies report an emergence of steady localized…
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…
Biomolecular condensates form by phase separation of biological polymers and have important functions in the cell $-$ functions that are inherently connected to their physical properties. A remarkable aspect of such condensates is that…
While the dynamics of polymer chains in equilibrium media is well understood by now, the polymer dynamics in active non-equilibrium environments can be very different. Here we study the dynamics of polymers in a viscous medium containing…
Biomolecular condensates are small droplets forming spontaneously in biological cells via phase separation. They play a role in many cellular processes, but it is unclear how cells control them. Cellular regulation often relies on…
We introduce a simulation strategy to consistently couple continuum biomembrane dynamics to the motion of discrete biological macromolecules residing within or on the membrane. The methodology is used to study the diffusion of integral…
Herein an alternative model to reptation to describe concentrated polymer dynamics is developed. The model assumes that the chains act as blobs that are able to diffuse past each other in a compressed state. Allowing that the local…
Biomolecules composed of a limited set of chemical building blocks can co-localize into distinct, spatially segregated compartments known as biomolecular condensates. While many condensates are known to form spontaneously via phase…
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…
Biomolecular condensates are formed via liquid-liquid phase separation of proteins, often together with nucleic acids, typically driven by interactions between low-affinity binding sites. The computational study of such condensates that…
Biomolecular condensates constitute a newly recognized form of spatial organization in living cells. Although many condensates are believed to form as a result of phase separation, the physicochemical properties that determine the phase…
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…
Polymers with both soluble and insoluble blocks typically self-assemble into micelles, aggregates of a finite number of polymers where the soluble blocks shield the insoluble ones from contact with the solvent. Upon increasing…
Biomolecular condensates are liquid- or gel-like droplets of proteins and nucleic acids formed at least in part through liquid-liquid phase separation. Condensates enable diverse functions of cells and the pathogens that infect them,…
The system of polymers in solvent mixtures is a widely-used model to represent biomolecular condensates in intracellular environments. Here, we apply a variational theory to control the center-of-mass of two polymers and perform the first…
We present a kinetic model of crystal growth of polymers of finite molecular weight. Experiments help to classify polymer crystallization broadly into two kinetic regimes. One is observed in melts or in high molar mass polymer solutions and…
Based on the random phase approximation, we develop a molecular theory of self-coacervation in zwitterionic polymer solutions. We show that the interplay between the volume interactions of the monomeric units and electrostatic correlations…
The self-consistent field theory is a popular and highly successful theoretical framework for studying equilibrium (co)polymer systems at the mesoscopic level. Dynamic density functionals allow one to use this framework for studying…
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…