Related papers: General approach for partitioning and phase separa…
Biomolecular condensates formed through the phase separation of proteins and nucleic acids are widely observed, offering a fundamental means of organizing intracellular materials in a membrane-less fashion. Traditionally, these condensates…
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…
We study binary mixtures of small active and big passive athermal particles interacting via soft repulsive forces on a frictional substrate. Athermal self propelled particles are known to phase separate into a dense aggregate and a dilute…
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…
Recent theoretical studies found that mixtures of active and passive colloidal particles phase separate but only at very high activity ratio. The high value poses serious obstacles for experimental exploration of this phenomenon. Here we…
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…
We consider a ternary mixture of hard colloidal spheres, ideal polymer spheres, and rigid vanishingly thin needles, which model stretched polymers or colloidal rods. For this model we develop a geometry-based density functional theory,…
Given the wide range of length scales, the analysis of polymer systems often requires coarse-graining, for which various levels of description may be possible depending on the phenomenon under consideration. Here, we provide a super-coarse…
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.…
We investigate polymer partitioning from polymer mixtures into nanometer size cavities by formulating an equation of state for a binary polymer mixture assuming that only one (smaller) of the two polymer components can penetrate the cavity.…
Biomolecular condensates are essential for cellular organization and result from phase separation in systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Among various models, chemically active droplets play a significant role, consisting of…
The structural and thermodynamic properties of mixtures of colloidal spheres and non-adsorbing polymer chains are studied within a novel general two-component macromolecular liquid state approach applicable for all size asymmetry ratios.…
We introduce and theoretically investigate a minimal particle-based model for a new class of active matter where particles exhibit directional, volume-conserving division in confinement while interacting sterically, mimicking cells in early…
The conditions of multi-phase equilibrium are solved for generic polydisperse systems. The case of multiple polydispersity is treated, where several properties (e.g. size, charge, shape) simultaneously vary from one particle to another. By…
Polymers consisting of more than one type of monomer, known as copolymers, are vital to both living and synthetic systems. Copolymerisation has been studied theoretically in a number of contexts, often by considering a Markov process in…
Biomolecules composed of a limited set of chemical building blocks can co-localize into distinct, spatially segregated compartments known as biomolecular condensates. While many condensates are known to form spontaneously via phase…
A new technique for the separation of macromolecules is proposed and investigated. A thin mesh with pores comparable to the radius of gyration of a free chain is used to filter chains according to their length. Without a field it has…
Colloidal suspensions with free polymer coils which are larger than the colloidal particles are considered. The polymer-colloid interaction is modeled by an extension of the Asakura-Oosawa model. Phase separation occurs into dilute and…
Microphase separation of membrane components is thought to play an important role in many physiological processes, from cell signaling to endocytosis and cellular trafficking. Here, we study how variations in the membrane composition can be…
Nanocomposite materials made of block copolymer and nanoparticles display properties which can be different from the purely polymeric matrix. The resulting material is a crossover of the original properties of the block copolymer and the…