Regensburg 2019 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 6: Poster I

BP 6.74: Poster

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

Interacting active droplets — •Ajinkya Kulkarni and David Zwicker — Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Göttingen

Liquid-liquid phase separation plays an important role in organizing material inside biological cells. Examples are membrane-less organelles, which can be described as liquid droplets. In equilibrium systems, droplets coarsen over time, so their size and count is not controlled. This instability could be counteracted by active processes inside cells. For instance, in active droplets, driven chemical reactions create diffusive fluxes, which affect the droplet dynamics. Consequently, multiple active droplets can co-exist.

We study how active droplets interact by numerically solving a modified Cahn-Hilliard equation and comparing the results with analytical predictions. We start by considering a single active droplet in an externally imposed chemical gradient. The results can be used to understand how two droplets interact. Our goal is to understand emulsions of many droplets, which will elucidate how cells could use driven chemical reactions to control droplets.