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 minimal model for an active colloidal fluid in the form of self-propelled Brownian spheres that interact purely through excluded volume with no aligning interaction undergoes an analog of an equilibrium continuous phase transition, with a binodal curve beneath which the system separates into dense and dilute phases whose concentrations depend only on activity.
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TL;DR: The phenomena of cytoplasmic streaming, elastotaxis, and active mechanosensing find natural explanations within the model of hydrodynamic velocity, concentration, and stress fields in a suspension of active, energy-dissipating particles.
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TL;DR: A nonequilibrium continuum dynamical model for the collective motion of large groups of biological organisms and describes a large universality class of microscopic rules, including those recently simulated by Vicsek et al.
TL;DR: Assembly and disassembly of stress granules are modulated by various post-translational modifications as well as numerous ATP-dependent RNP or protein remodeling complexes, illustrating that stress granule formation represents an active liquid wherein energy input maintains their dynamic state.
TL;DR: In this paper, a hydrodynamic similarity solution of the decay in velocity of an initially moving volume element in an otherwise stationary compressible viscous fluid agrees with a decay of the velocity autocorrelation function.
TL;DR: In this article, the Navier-Stokes equations were studied in two dimensions, where they were shown to be invariant to a variety of Gaussian random forces, and to the usual long-time tail phenomena.
TL;DR: It is shown that both the size and shape of the amphibian oocyte nucleolus ultimately arise because nucleoli behave as liquid-like droplets of RNA and protein, exhibiting characteristic viscous fluid dynamics even on timescales of < 1 min.
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.