493 citations · 1.3k across the 22 of their papers we have counts for
22 papers
Beyond Pairwise: Higher-order physical interactions affect phase separation in multi-component liquids
Chengjie Luo, Yicheng Qiang, David Zwicker
Phase separation, crucial for spatially segregating biomolecules in cells, is well-understood in the simple case of a few components with pairwise interactions. Yet, biological cel…
Theory of Elastic Microphase Separation
Yicheng Qiang, Chengjie Luo, David Zwicker
Elastic microphase separation refers to equilibrium patterns that form by phase separation in elastic gels. Recent experiments revealed a continuous phase transition from the homog…
Influence of physical interactions on spatiotemporal patterns
Chengjie Luo, David Zwicker
Spatiotemporal patterns are often modeled using reaction-diffusion equations, which combine complex reactions between constituents with ideal diffusive motion. Such descriptions ne…
Physical interactions promote Turing patterns
Lucas Menou, Chengjie Luo, David Zwicker
Turing's mechanism is often invoked to explain periodic patterns in nature, although direct experimental support is scarce. Turing patterns form in reaction-diffusion systems when…
Zonal receptor distributions maximize olfactory information
Swati Sen, David Zwicker
The olfactory sense measures the chemical composition of the environment using a diverse array of olfactory receptors. In vertebrates, the olfactory receptors reside in a mucus lay…
Nucleation of chemically active droplets
Noah Ziethen, Jan Kirschbaum, David Zwicker
Driven chemical reactions can control the macroscopic properties of droplets, like their size. Such active droplets are critical in structuring the interior of biological cells. Ce…
Memory capacity of adaptive flow networks
Komal Bhattacharyya, David Zwicker, Karen Alim
Biological flow networks adapt their network morphology to optimise flow while being exposed to external stimuli from different spatial locations in their environment. These adapti…
Effective simulations of interacting active droplets
Ajinkya Kulkarni, Estefania Vidal-Henriquez, David Zwicker
Droplets form a cornerstone of the spatiotemporal organization of biomolecules in cells. These droplets are controlled using physical processes like chemical reactions and imposed…
Thermodynamically Consistent Phase-Field Theory Including Nearest-Neighbor Pair Correlations Explains Failure of Mean-Field Reasoning
Kristian Blom, Noah Ziethen, David Zwicker +1
Most of our current understanding of phase separation is based on ideas that disregard correlaions. Here we illuminate unexpected effects of correlations on the structure and therm…
The intertwined physics of active chemical reactions and phase separation
David Zwicker
Phase separation is the thermodynamic process that explains how droplets form in multicomponent fluids. These droplets can provide controlled compartments to localize chemical reac…
Evolved interactions stabilize many coexisting phases in multicomponent liquids
David Zwicker, Liedewij Laan
Phase separation has emerged as an essential concept for the spatial organization inside biological cells. However, despite the clear relevance to virtually all physiological funct…
Controlling biomolecular condensates via chemical reactions
Jan Kirschbaum, David Zwicker
Biomolecular condensates are small droplets forming spontaneously in biological cells via phase separation. They play a role in many cellular processes, but it is unclear how cells…
Cavitation controls droplet sizes in elastic media
Estefania Vidal-Henriquez, David Zwicker
Biological cells use droplets to separate components and spatially control their interior. Experiments demonstrate that the complex, crowded cellular environment affects the drople…
Light controls motility and phase separation of photosynthetic microbes
Alexandros A. Fragkopoulos, Jérémy Vachier, Johannes Frey +4
Large ensembles of interacting, out-of-equilibrium agents are a paradigm of active matter. Their constituents' intrinsic activity may entail the spontaneous separation into localiz…
Elastic stresses reverse Ostwald ripening
Kathryn A. Rosowski, Estefania Vidal-Henriquez, David Zwicker +2
When liquid droplets nucleate and grow in a polymer network, compressive stresses can significantly increase their internal pressure, reaching values that far exceed the Laplace pr…
Theory of droplet ripening in stiffness gradients
Estefania Vidal-Henriquez, David Zwicker
Liquid-liquid phase separation is an important mechanism for compartmentalizing the cell's cytoplasm, allowing the dynamic organization of the components necessary for survival. Ho…
Physics of Active Emulsions
Christoph A. Weber, David Zwicker, Frank Jülicher +1
Phase separating systems that are maintained away from thermodynamic equilibrium via molecular processes represent a class of active systems, which we call active emulsions. These…
Physical and geometric constraints explain the labyrinth-like shape of the nasal cavity
David Zwicker, Rodolfo Ostilla-Mónico, Daniel E. Lieberman +1
The nasal cavity is a vital component of the respiratory system that heats and humidifies inhaled air in all vertebrates. Despite this common function, the shapes of nasal cavities…
Normalized neural representations of natural odors
David Zwicker
The olfactory system removes correlations in natural odors using a network of inhibitory neurons in the olfactory bulb. It has been proposed that this network integrates the respon…
Growth and Division of Active Droplets: A Model for Protocells
David Zwicker, Rabea Seyboldt, Christoph A. Weber +2
It has been proposed that during the early steps in the origin of life, small droplets could have formed via the segregation of molecules from complex mixtures by phase separation.…
Receptor arrays optimized for natural odor statistics
David Zwicker, Arvind Murugan, Michael P. Brenner
Natural odors typically consist of many molecules at different concentrations. It is unclear how the numerous odorant molecules and their possible mixtures are discriminated by rel…
Robust circadian clocks from coupled protein modification and transcription-translation cycles
David Zwicker, David K. Lubensky, Pieter Rein ten Wolde
The cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus uses both a protein phosphorylation cycle and a transcription-translation cycle to generate circadian rhythms that are highly robust agai…