Related papers: Enzyme-driven phase separation
Liquid-liquid phase separation has emerged as a fundamental mechanism underlying intracellular organization, with evidence for it being reported in numerous different systems. However, there is a growing concern regarding the lack of…
In multicellular organisms, epithelial cells form layers separating compartments responsible for different physiological functions. At the early stage of epithelial layer formation, each cell of an aggregate defines an inner and an outer…
The sustenance of life depends on the high degree of organization that prevails through different levels of living organisms, from subcellular structures such as biomolecular complexes and organelles to tissues and organs. The physical…
We perform computer simulations of a Cahn-Hilliard model of phase separation which has dynamical asymmetry between the two coexisting phases. The dynamical asymmetry is incorporated by considering a mobility function which is order…
Multistationarity in biological systems is a mechanism of cellular decision making. In particular, signaling pathways regulated by protein phosphorylation display features that facilitate a variety of responses to different biological…
We study a mechanism for reliable switching in biomolecular signal-transduction cascades. Steady bistable states are created by system-size cooperative effects in populations of proteins, in spite of the fact that the phosphorylation-state…
We perform an analytical investigation of the cell interface dynamics in the framework of a minimal phase field model of cell motility suggested in [1], which consists of two coupled evolution equations for the order parameter and a…
The membrane components of cellular organelles have been shown to segregate into domains as the result of biochemical maturation. We propose that the dynamical competition between maturation and lateral segregation of membrane components…
Cell polarization is a critical process that separates molecular species into two distinct regions in prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, guiding biological processes such as cell division and cell differentiation. Although several underlying…
Giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) composed of as few as three lipid species can phase separate into small-scale lipid domains with stripes and dots patterns. These patterns have been experimentally characterized in terms of how their size…
Nonlinear channels play a critical role in realizing dynamical functions. Neural ionic channels and non-volatile memristors each derive representative biological and electrical functionalities, such as repetitive firing or pinched…
We propose an active Cahn-Hilliard theory for the dynamics of a new type of phase transition where the driving force is not the direct interactions between the two separating components, but their active sorting by a third polar species.…
Protein pattern formation is essential for the spatial organization of many intracellular processes like cell division, flagellum positioning, and chemotaxis. A prominent example of intracellular patterns are the oscillatory pole-to-pole…
Cell membranes interact with a myriad of curvature-active proteins that control membrane morphology and are responsible for mechanosensation and mechanotransduction. Some of these proteins, such as those containing BAR domains, are curved…
Liquid-liquid phase separation is important across biology, physics, and materials science. Although usually studied at equilibrium, active components - such as motor proteins, enzymes, and synthetic microswimmers - are increasingly…
Eukaryotic cells possess a sensible chemical compass allowing them to orient toward sources of soluble chemicals. The extracellular chemical signal triggers separation of the cell membrane into two domains populated by different…
Phase separation is a fairly common physical phenomenon with examples including the formation of water droplets from humid air (fog, rain), the separation of a crystalline structure from an isotropic material such as a liquid or even the…
Coupling between chemical fuel consumption and phase separation can lead to condensation at a nonequilibrium steady state, resulting in phase behaviors that are not described by equilibrium thermodynamics. Theoretical models of such…
Using an analytically tractable lattice model for reaction-diffusion processes of hard-core particles we demonstrate that under nonequilibrium conditions phase coexistence may arise even if the system is effectively one-dimensional as e.g.…
Phase separation can drive spatial organization of multicomponent mixtures. For instance in developing animal embryos, effective phase separation descriptions have been used to account for the spatial organization of different tissue types.…