Regensburg 2019 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 6: Poster I

BP 6.70: Poster

Montag, 1. April 2019, 17:30–19:30, Poster B2

Thermodynamics of Active Droplets — •Jan Kirschbaum and David Zwicker — Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Göttingen, Germany

Biological cells need to organize their material in space and time. One organization principle is phase separation leading to membraneless compartments. Phase separation implies that large droplets grow at the expense of small ones. To counteract this instability cells can use non-equilibrium processes driven by the consumption of ATP. One example are active droplets, where the droplet material is created by driven chemical reactions.

We study active droplets by developing a thermodynamically consistent model combining phase separation with chemical reactions based on linear non-equilibrium thermodynamics. In the limiting case of first order reactions, hexagonal patterns are typical. Using a mathematical analogy with equilibrium systems with long range interactions we determine numerically how these patterns depend on the parameters of phase separation and chemical reactions. This analysis shows that the analytical predictions work better than expected. Our results show how cells can use chemical reactions to control the size of active droplets.