Related papers: Three eras of micellization
We investigate the influence of a shear flow on the process of nucleation. Mesoscopic nonequilibrium thermodynamics is used to derive the Fokker-Planck equation governing the evolution of the cluster size distribution in a metastable phase…
The fragmentation of filaments in molecular clouds has attracted a lot of attention as there seems to be a relation between the evolution of filaments and star formation. The study of the fragmentation process has been motivated by simple…
We generalize a recently investigated lattice model of semiflexible polymers formed under equilibrium polymerization in a solution and conduct a comprehensive investigation of its melting properties. The model is characterized by six…
If many micelles adsorb onto the same polymer molecule then they are said to form a necklace. A minimal model of such a necklace is proposed and shown to be almost equivalent to a 1-dimensional fluid with nearest-neighbour interactions. The…
We study the effect of the molecular architecture of amphiphilic star polymers on the shape of aggregates they form in water. Both solute and solvent are considered at a coarse-grained level by means of dissipative particle dynamics…
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 introduce an aggregation process that begins with equal concentrations of positively and negatively `charged' monomers. Oppositely charged monomers merge to form neutral dimers. These dimers are the seeds for subsequent aggregation…
Relatively short peptides, such as toxins and antimicrobial-peptides, are known to insert themselves into cell membranes. On the basis of simple bead-spring models for the membrane lipids, the peptide, and water, detailed processes of the…
We use mesoscale simulations to gain insight into the digestion of biopolymers by studying the break-up dynamics of polymer aggregates (boluses) bound by physical cross-links. We investigate aggregate evolution, establishing that the…
Active droplets undergoing micellar solubilization can self-propel themselves by emitting filled micelles from their surface and are by nature anti-chemotactic. These droplets get repelled by their own trail of filled micelles or by other…
Cluster concepts have been extremely useful in elucidating many problems in physics. Percolation theory provides a generic framework to study the behavior of the cluster distribution. In most cases the theory predicts a geometrical…
We investigate a model of cell division in which the length of telomeres within the cell regulate their proliferative potential. At each cell division the ends of linear chromosomes change and a cell becomes senescent when one or more of…
We propose a model for cell polarization as a response to an external signal which results in a system of PDEs for different variants of a protein on the cell surface and interior respectively. We study stationary states of this model in…
Proteins and nucleic acids can spontaneously self-assemble into membraneless droplet-like compartments, both in vitro and in vivo. A key component of these droplets are multi-valent proteins that possess several adhesive domains with…
We introduce and analyse a class of fragmentation-coalescence processes defined on finite systems of particles organised into clusters. Coalescent events merge multiple clusters simultaneously to form a single larger cluster, while…
Using numerical simulations, we investigate the gravitational evolution of filamentary molecular cloud structures and their condensation into dense protostellar cores. One possible process is the so called 'edge effect', the pile-up of…
Microrheology experiments show that viscoelastic media composed by wormlike micellar networks display complex relaxations lasting seconds even at the scale of micrometers. By mapping a model of patchy colloids with suitable mesoscopic…
Combining high-speed photography with electric current measurement, we investigate the electrocoalescence of Pickering emulsion droplets. Under high enough electric field, the originally-stable droplets coalesce via two distinct approaches:…
We study mean-field inclusion processes with an additional slow phase, in which particle interactions occur at a vanishing rate proportional to the inverse system size. In the thermodynamic limit, such systems exhibit condensation at high…
Aggregation and fragmentation of single molecules in the cell environment lead to a spectrum of diffusivities and to statistical laws of movement very different from typical Brownian motion. Current models of intracellular transport do not…