Related papers: Theory for sequence selection via phase separation…
The emergence of functional oligonucleotides on early Earth required a molecular selection mechanism to screen for specific sequences with prebiotic functions. Cyclic processes such as daily temperature oscillations were ubiquitous in this…
Phase separation drives the formation of biomolecular condensates in cells, which comprise many components and sometimes possess multiple phases. The equilibrium physics of phase separation is well understood, but many components in…
Differences in activities in colloidal particles are sufficient to drive phase separation between active and passive (or less active) particles, even if they have only excluded volume interactions. In this paper, we study the phase…
Biological cells exhibit a hierarchical spatial organization, where various compartments harbor condensates that form by phase separation. Cells can control the emergence of these condensates by affecting compartment size, the amount of the…
In active systems, whose constituents have non-equilibrium dynamics at local level, fluid-fluid phase separation is widely observed. Examples include the formation of membraneless organelles within cells; the clustering of self-propelled…
The emergence of longer information-carrying and functional nucleotide polymers from random short strands was a major stepping stone at the dawn of life. But the formation of those polymers under temperature oscillation required some form…
Phase separation of sequence-disordered liquid crystalline polymers, a promising class of technological and biological relevance, is studied by field theory, and thermodynamic mechanisms responsible for orientational ordering observed in…
The effect of quenched disorder in the one-dimensional asymmetric exclusion process is reviewed. Both particlewise and sitewise disorder generically induces phase separation in a range of densities. In the particlewise case the existence of…
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…
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…
Phase separation has emerged as an essential concept for the spatial organization inside biological cells. However, despite the clear relevance to virtually all physiological functions, we understand surprisingly little about what phases…
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…
Emergence and maintenance of polymers with complex sequences is a major question in the study of origins of life. To answer this, we studied a model polymerization reaction, where polymers are synthesized by stepwise ligation from two types…
Phase segregation, the process by which the components of a binary mixture spontaneously separate, is a key process in the evolution and design of many chemical, mechanical, and biological systems. In this work, we present a data-driven…
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.…
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…
Many materials containing colloids or polymers are polydisperse: They comprise particles with properties (such as particle diameter, charge, or polymer chain length) that depend continuously on one or several parameters. This review…
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…
Phase separation and transitions among different molecular states are ubiquitous in living cells. Such transitions can be governed by local equilibrium thermodynamics or by active processes controlled by biological fuel. It remains largely…
Each living species carries a complex DNA sequence that determines their unique features and functionalities. It is generally assumed that life started from a random pool of oligonucleotides sequences, generated by a prebiotic…