Related papers: Enhanced condensate fluidity in modified patchy pa…
Emergent phenomena share the fascinating property of not being obvious consequences of the design of the system in which they appear. This characteristic is no less relevant when attempting to simulate such phenomena, given that the outcome…
Patchy particles is the name given to a large class of systems of mesoscopic particles characterized by a repulsive core and a discrete number of short-range and highly directional interaction sites. Numerical simulations have contributed…
We present a theoretical model for the evolution of mixture concentrations in a micro-pervaporation device, similar to those recently presented experimentally. The described device makes use of the pervaporation of water through a thin PDMS…
Liquid mixtures of many interacting components often exhibit numerous coexisting types of droplets. An exciting example is the cytosol of biological cells, where diverse droplets, called condensates, are essential for cellular function.…
Cellular membranes exhibit a large variety of shapes, strongly coupled to their function. Many biological processes involve dynamic reshaping of membranes, usually mediated by proteins. This interaction works both ways: while proteins…
Living systems must maintain robust biochemical function despite fluctuations that span a wide range of timescales. Biomolecular condensates formed by liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) have been shown to buffer concentration…
Biomolecular condensates form on timescales of seconds in cells upon environmental or compositional changes. Condensate formation is thus argued to act as a mechanism for sensing such changes and quickly initiating downstream processes,…
We present a minimal model for simulating dynamics of assorted lipid assemblies in a computationally efficient manner. Our model is particle-based and consists of coarse-grained beads put together on a modular platform to give generic…
Phase separation of various materials has been studied for one and a half centuries. In the last two decades, phase separation of proteins and nucleic acids has received enormous attention, due its relevance to cellular functions. However,…
We use molecular dynamics simulations in two dimensions to investigate the possibility that a core-softened potential can reproduce static and dynamic anomalies found experimentally in liquid water: (i) the increase in specific volume upon…
We consider a fluid of hard spheres bearing one or two uniform circular adhesive patches, distributed so as not to overlap. Two spheres interact via a ``sticky'' Baxter potential if the line joining the centers of the two spheres intersects…
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…
Liquid-liquid phase separation plays a major role in the formation and maintenance of various membrane-less subcellular structures in the cytoplasm and nucleus of cells. Biological condensates contain enhanced concentrations of proteins and…
Active suspensions, which consist of suspended self-propelling particles such as swimming microorganisms, often exhibit non-trivial transport properties. Continuum models are frequently employed to elucidate phenomena in active suspensions,…
Inverse Patchy Colloids (IPCs) differ from conventional patchy particles because their patches repel (rather than attract) each other and attract (rather than repel) the part of the colloidal surface that is free of patches. These…
In this work we examine thermodynamics of fluid with "molecules" represented by two fused hard spheres, decorated by the attractive square-well sites. Interactions between these sites are of short-range and cause association between the…
A coarse-grained computational model is used to investigate the effect of a fluctuating fluid membrane on the dynamics of patchy-particle assembly into virus capsid-like cores. Results from simulations for a broad range of parameters are…
Discrete particle simulation, a combined approach of computational fluid dynamics and discrete methods such as DEM (Discrete Element Method), DSMC (Direct Simulation Monte Carlo), SPH (Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics), PIC…
Active networks made of biopolymers and motor proteins are valuable bioinspired systems that have been used in the last decades to study the cytoskeleton and its self-organization under mechanical stimulation. Different techniques are…
Nanoparticles with "sticky patches" have long been proposed as building blocks for the self-assembly of complex structures. The synthetic realizability of such patchy particles, however, greatly lags behind predictions of patterns they…