Related papers: Control of encounter kinetics by chemically active…
We study the hydrodynamics and shape changes of chemically active droplets. In non-spherical droplets, surface tension generates hydrodynamic flows that drive liquid droplets into a spherical shape. Here we show that spherical droplets that…
The appearance of emergent symmetries in complex systems with components that can form composite units provides us with opportunities for design and control of exotic phase behaviour, for example by exploiting the dynamical symmetry…
Biomolecular condensates such as membraneless organelles, underpinned by liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS), are important for physiological function, with electrostatics -- among other interaction types -- being a prominent force in…
Dry active matter systems are well-known to exhibit Motility-Induced Phase Separation (MIPS). However, in wet active systems, attractive hydrodynamic interactions mediated by active particles stalled at a boundary can introduce…
Complex biochemical pathways or regulatory enzyme kinetics can be reduced to chains of elementary reactions, which can be described in terms of chemical kinetics. This discipline provides a set of tools for quantifying and understanding the…
Bacteria in aquatic environments often interact with particulate matter. A key example is bacterial degradation of marine snow responsible for carbon export from the upper ocean in the biological pump. The ecological interaction between…
Solvent plays an important role in the relative motion of nanoscopic bodies, and the study of such phenomena can help elucidate the mechanism of hydrophobic assembly, as well as the influence of solvent-mediated effects on in vivo motion in…
Active matter comprised of many self-driven units can exhibit emergent collective behaviors such as pattern formation and phase separation in both biologica and synthetic systems. While these behaviors are increasingly well understood for…
At the heart of the structured architecture and complex dynamics of biological systems are specific and timely interactions operated by biomolecules. In many instances, biomolecular agents are spatially confined to flexible lipid membranes…
Chemical reactions are usually studied under the assumption that both substrates and catalysts are well mixed (WM) throughout the system. Although this is often applicable to test-tube experimental conditions, it is not realistic in…
Understanding the out-of-equilibrium properties of noisy microscale systems and the extent to which they can be modulated externally, is a crucial scientific and technological challenge. It holds the promise to unlock disruptive new…
Colloidal mixtures represent a versatile model system to study transport in complex environments. They allow for a systematic variation of the control parameters, namely size ratio, total volume fraction and composition. We study the…
Many practically relevant materials combine properties of viscous fluids and elastic solids to viscoelastic behavior. Our focus is on the induced dynamic behavior of damped finite-sized particulate inclusions in such substances. We…
Water and water-mediated interactions determine thermodynamic and kinetics of protein folding, protein aggregation and self-assembly in confined spaces. To obtain insights into the role of water in the context of folding problems, we…
Controlling interfaces of phase separating fluid mixtures is key to creating diverse functional soft materials. Traditionally, this is accomplished with surface-modifying chemical agents. Using experiment and theory, we study how mechanical…
Motor-proteins are responsible for transport inside cells. Harnessing their activity is key towards developing new nano-technologies, or functional biomaterials. Cytoskeleton-like networks, recently tailored in vitro, result from the…
Binary droplet collisions are of importance in a variety of practical applications comprising dispersed two-phase flows. The background of our research is the prediction of properties of particulate products formed in spray processes. To…
In a system of colloidal inclusions suspended in a thermalized bath of smaller particles, the bath engenders an attractive force between the inclusions, arising mainly from entropic origins, known as the depletion force. In the case of…
Evaporating colloidal droplets have long been used as model systems to understand capillarity, interfacial transport, and particle assembly, most prominently through the coffee ring effect. In classical descriptions, suspended particles are…
Along with recent progress in structural biology and genome biology, structural dynamics of molecular systems including nucleic acids has attracted attention in the context of gene regulation. Structure-function relationship is an important…