Related papers: Chemically active droplets in crowded environments
Biochemical reactions inside living cells often occur in the presence of crowders -- molecules that do not participate in the reactions but influence the reaction rates through excluded volume effects. However the standard approach to…
These lecture notes describe a basic theory of chemically active droplets, which are droplets kept away from equilibrium by driven chemical reactions. The notes assume a basic familiarity with equilibrium thermodynamics of phase separation,…
The dispersal of cells from an initially constrained location is a crucial aspect of many physiological phenomena ranging from morphogenesis to tumour spreading. In such processes, the way cell-cell interactions impact the motion of single…
In living cells, molecular motors create activity that enhances the diffusion of particles throughout the cytoplasm, and not just ones attached to the motors. We demonstrate initial steps toward creating artificial cells that mimic this…
Many natural and industrial processes rely on constrained transport, such as proteins moving through cells, particles confined in nanocomposite materials or gels, individuals in highly dense collec- tives and vehicular traffic conditions.…
The diffusion of molecules (penetrants) of variable size, shape, and chemistry through dense crosslinked polymer networks is a fundamental scientific problem that is broadly relevant in materials, polymer, physical and biological chemistry.…
Crowded environments modify the diffusion of macromolecules, generally slowing their movement and inducing transient anomalous subdiffusion. The presence of obstacles also modifies the kinetics and equilibrium behavior of tracers. While…
Packing and crowding are used in biology as mechanisms to (self-)regulate internal molecular or cellular processes based on collective signalling. Here, we study how the transition kinetics of an internal switch of responsive macromolecules…
We calculate the diffusion coefficient of an active tracer in a schematic crowded environment, represented as a lattice gas of passive particles with hardcore interactions. Starting from the master equation of the problem, we put forward a…
Biomolecules, such as proteins and RNAs, can phase separate in the cytoplasm of cells to form biomolecular condensates. Such condensates are liquid-like droplets that can wet biological surfaces such as membranes. Many molecules that…
Systems containing active components are intrinsically out of equilibrium, while binary mixtures reach their equilibrium configuration when complete phase separation is achieved. Active particles are found to stabilise non-equilibrium…
We investigated the energy transfer from active enzymes to their surroundings in crowded environments by measuring the diffusion of passive microscopic tracers in active solutions of ficoll and glycerol. Despite observing lower rates of…
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…
Confluent cell monolayers and epithelia tissues show remarkable patterns and correlations in structural arrangements and actively-driven collective flows. We simulate these properties using multiphase field models. The models are based on…
Emulsions ripen with an average droplet size increasing in time. In chemically active emulsions, coarsening can be absent, leading to a non-equilibrium steady state with mono-disperse droplet sizes. By considering a minimal model for phase…
This paper provides an overview and critical analysis on the modeling and applications of the dynamics of human crowds, where social interactions can have an important influence on the behavioral dynamics of the crowd viewed as a living,…
Diffusion of a two component fluid is studied in the framework of differential equations, but where these equations are systematically derived from a well-defined microscopic model. The model has a finite carrying capacity imposed upon it…
Motor enzymes are remarkable molecular machines that use the energy derived from the hydrolysis of a nucleoside triphosphate to generate mechanical movement, achieved through different steps that constitute their kinetic cycle. These…
The ability to control the crystallization behaviour (including its absence) of particles, be they biomolecules such as globular proteins, inorganic colloids, nanoparticles, or metal atoms in an alloy, is of both fundamental and…
We give an overview exploring the role of kinetics in multicomponent mixtures. Compared to the most commonly studied binary (single species plus solvent) case, multicomponent fluids show a rich interplay between kinetics and thermodynamics…