Related papers: Chemical Reactions regulated by Phase-Separated Co…

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…

Phase separating systems that are maintained away from thermodynamic equilibrium via molecular processes represent a class of active systems, which we call active emulsions. These systems are driven by external energy input for example…

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, crucial for spatially segregating biomolecules in cells, is well-understood in the simple case of a few components with pairwise interactions. Yet, biological cells challenge the simple picture in at least two ways: First,…

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…

Evidence accumulated over the past decade provides support for liquid-liquid phase separation as the mechanism underlying the formation of biomolecular condensates, which include not only membraneless organelles such as nucleoli and RNA…

Biological cells and synthetic analogues use liquid-liquid phase separation to dynamically compartmentalize their environment for various applications. In many cases, multiple droplets need to coexist, and their size needs to be controlled,…

Here we investigate how the positions of a condensed phase can be controlled by using concentration gradients of a regulator that influences phase separation. We consider a mean field model of a ternary mixture where a concentration…

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…

Chemical processes in closed systems are poorly controllable since they always relax to equilibrium. Living systems avoid this fate and give rise to a much richer diversity of phenomena by operating under nonequilibrium conditions. Recent…

Biomolecular condensates are complex droplets comprising diverse molecules that interact using various mechanisms. Condensation is often driven by short-ranged attraction, but net charges can also mediate long-ranged repulsion. Using…

Reaction equations of homogeneously mixed pollutants in the atmosphere can lead to non-stationary periodic solutions. It is important to know in which respect these solutions are modified under the influence of the atmospheric currents. We…

Processes involving multi-input multi-step reaction cascades are used in developing novel biosensing, biocomputing, and decision making systems. In various applications different changes in responses of the constituent processing steps…

Living organisms rely on molecular networks, such as gene circuits and signaling pathways, for information processing and robust decision-making in crowded, noisy environments. Recent advances show that interacting biomolecules…

Biomolecular condensates play a central role in the spatial organization of living matter. Their formation is now well understood as a form of liquid-liquid phase separation that occurs very far from equilibrium. For instance, they can be…

The formation of condensates is now considered as a major organization principle of eukaryotic cells. Several studies have recently shown that the properties of these condensates are affected by enzymatic reactions. We propose here a simple…

Liquid-liquid phase separation is important across biology, physics, and materials science. Although usually studied at equilibrium, active components - such as motor proteins, enzymes, and synthetic microswimmers - are increasingly…

We theoretically study mixtures of chemically-interacting particles, which produce or consume a chemical to which they are attracted or repelled, in the most general case of many coexisting species. We find a new class of active phase…

Cells regulate gene expression in part by forming DNA-protein condensates in the nucleus. While existing theories describe the equilibrium size and stability of such condensates, their dynamics remain less understood. Here, we use…

Non-equilibrium selection pressures were proposed for the formation of oligonucleotides with rich functionalities encoded in their sequences, such as catalysis. Since phase separation was shown to direct various chemical processes, we ask…