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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 14: Focus: Phase Separation in Biological Systems II (joint session BP/CPP)

BP 14.4: Vortrag

Dienstag, 17. März 2020, 10:15–10:30, ZEU 250

Phase Separation of Active Polymers — •Antoine Deblais¹, Daniel Bonn¹, and Sander Woutersen² — ¹Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute, Institute of Physics, University of Amsterdam, 1098XH Amsterdam, The Netherlands. — ²Van 't Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Science Park 904, 1098XH Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Here, we investigate the aggregation and phase separation of thin, living T.Tubifex worms that behave as active polymers. Randomly dispersed active worms spontaneously aggregate to form compact, highly entangled blobs, a process similar to polymer phase separation, and for which we observe power-law growth kinetics. We find that the phase separation of active polymer-like worms does not occur through Ostwald ripening, but through active motion and coalescence of the phase domains. Interestingly, the growth mechanism differs from conventional growth by droplet coalescence: the diffusion constant characterizing the random motion of a worm blob is independent of its size, a phenomenon that can be explained from the fact that the active random motion arises only from the worms at the surface of the blob. This leads to a fundamentally different phase-separation mechanism, that may be unique to active polymers.