Chemical reaction-controlled phase separated drops: Formation, size selection, and coarsening

Abstract

Phase separation under non-equilibrium conditions is exploited by biological cells to organize their cytoplasm but remains poorly understood as a physical phenomenon. Here, we study a ternary fluid model in which phase-separating molecules can be converted into soluble molecules, and vice versa, via chemical reactions. We elucidate using analytical and simulation methods how drop size, formation, and coarsening can be controlled by the chemical reaction rates, and categorize the qualitative behavior of the system into distinct regimes. Ostwald ripening arrest occurs above critical reaction rates, demonstrating that this transition belongs entirely to the non-equilibrium regime. Our model is a minimal representation of the cell cytoplasm.

4-page main text plus supplemental material. Version 3 contains revised analytical and simulation results and more extensive discussion

References in corpus (3)

• Phase transitions in biological systems with many components
• Instabilities in complex mixtures with a large number of components
• Droplet Ripening in Concentration Gradients

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