<< active droplets can move autonomously or oscillate between confining walls (..). Those behaviors could provide a clue about how life emerged from inanimate material. >>️
<< in the past decades, it has become clear that weak physical interactions among biomolecules are a crucial part of the answer. Such interactions allow some molecules to stay together transiently while avoiding others, which can lead to the spontaneous formation of droplets whose composition differs from their surroundings. Although biochemist Alexander Oparin suggested such ideas a century ago (..), experimental corroboration arrived only recently >>️
<< The key contribution of Demarchi and his collaborators is to demonstrate that droplet drift can enhance the heterogeneity of substrate and product. The resulting positive feedback allows droplets to move continuously as if they were surfing on a self-generated wave. >>️
David Zwicker. Droplets Come to Life. Physics 16, 45. Mar 20, 2023.
AA << find that condensates move toward the center of a confining domain when this feedback is weak. Above a feedback threshold, they exhibit self-propulsion, leading to oscillatory dynamics. Moreover, catalysis-driven enzyme fluxes can lead to interrupted coarsening, resulting in equidistant condensate positioning, and to condensate division. >>
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Leonardo Demarchi, Andriy Goychuk, et al. Enzyme-Enriched Condensates Show Self-Propulsion, Positioning, and Coexistence. Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 128401. Mar 20, 2023.
Also
'drop', 'droplet', 'droploid', 'transition' in
Keywords: gst, drop, droplet, waves, transition, liquid-liquid phase transition, nonequilibrium systems
