In this paper, the authors discuss how driven chemical reactions can arrest universal coarsening kinetics expected from thermal phase separation, and how motility leads to the emergence of a novel universality class when the rotational symmetry is spontaneously broken in an incompressible fluid.
Abstract:
Phase transitions, such as the freezing of water and the magnetisation of a ferromagnet upon lowering the ambient temperature, are familiar physical phenomena. Interestingly, such a collective change of behaviour at a phase transition is also of importance to living systems. From cytoplasmic organisation inside a cell to the collective migration of cell tissue during organismal development and wound healing, phase transitions have emerged as key mechanisms underlying many crucial biological processes. However, a living system is fundamentally different from a thermal system, with driven chemical reactions (e.g., metabolism) and motility being two hallmarks of its nonequilibrium nature. In this review, we will discuss how driven chemical reactions can arrest universal coarsening kinetics expected from thermal phase separation, and how motility leads to the emergence of a novel universality class when the rotational symmetry is spontaneously broken in an incompressible fluid.
TL;DR: A generic two-field Cahn-Hilliard model with variational and nonvariational coupling is investigated, for instance, passive and active ternary mixtures, respectively, to establish that nonvariations can partially or completely suppress coarsening and may lead to the emergence of drifting and oscillatory states.
TL;DR: This review considers phase-separated liquids that interact with membrane surfaces and discusses the consequences of those interactions, including the physical properties of distinct liquid phases in contact with bilayers that reshape the membrane.
TL;DR: It is shown that amino acid sequence-dependent phase separation of TAF15 is enhanced significantly due to strong nuclear interactions with the C-terminal domain (CTD) of RNA Pol II, which suggests a model in which positive feedback between key transcriptional components drives intermittent dynamics of localized phase separation, to amplify gene expression.
TL;DR: It is indicated that ATP is continuously hydrolysed to deter SG formation under normal conditions, and specific predictions that can be tested experimentally are provided.
TL;DR: The characteristic length of the colloidal systems was determined to correlate with system variables such as magnetic field strength, particle concentration, and time in a power-law scaling relationship, allowing for better control of the phases observed in these magnetically tunable colloid systems.
TL;DR: In this paper, an analysis is made of the process whereby diffusion effects can cause the precipitation of grains of a second phase in a supersaturated solid solution, and the kinetics of this type of grain growth are examined in detail.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors report, extend, and interpret much of our current understanding relating to theories of noise-activated escape, for which many of the notable contributions are originating from the communities both of physics and of physical chemistry.
TL;DR: A model is proposed for the evolution of the profile of a growing interface that exhibits nontrivial relaxation patterns, and the exact dynamic scaling form obtained for a one-dimensional interface is in excellent agreement with previous numerical simulations.
TL;DR: The first chapter of this important new text is available on the Cambridge Worldwide Web server: http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk/onlinepubs/Textbooks/textbookstop.html as discussed by the authors.
TL;DR: This review summarizes theoretical progress in the field of active matter, placing it in the context of recent experiments, and highlights the experimental relevance of various semimicroscopic derivations of the continuum theory for describing bacterial swarms and suspensions, the cytoskeleton of living cells, and vibrated granular material.
Q1. What contributions have the authors mentioned in the paper "Novel physics arising from phase transitions in biology" ?
In this review, the authors will discuss how driven chemical reactions can arrest universal coarsening kinetics expected from thermal phase separation, and how motility leads to the emergence of a novel universality class when the rotational symmetry is spontaneously broken in an incompressible fluid.
Q2. What are the future works mentioned in the paper "Novel physics arising from phase transitions in biology" ?
In terms of outlook, the authors believe the following future directions will expand the horizon of both biology and physics. ( i ) In Sec. 2 the authors have studied how driven chemical reactions can stabilise a multidrop, ternary system. As the cell cytoplasm is a complex mixture of thousands of different molecules [ 82, 83 ] it will be interesting to see how these results may be modified in a many-component mixtures. Such a 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 Novel physics arising from phase transitions in biology 32 structure naturally suggests a kind of repulsive interactions between drops, which may serve to stabilise a multi-drop system against coarsening via coalescence due to drop diffusion.