Regensburg 2025 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 43: Active Matter IV (joint session BP/CPP/DY)

DY 43.12: Vortrag

Freitag, 21. März 2025, 12:45–13:00, H44

Force Generation by Enhanced Diffusion in Enzyme-Loaded Vesicles — Eike Eberhard, •Ludwig Burger, Cesar Pastrana, Giovanni Giunta, and Ulrich Gerland — Physik komplexer Biosysteme, Technische Universität München, Deutschland

Recent experiments show that the diffusion coefficient of some metabolic enzymes increases with the concentration of their cognate substrate, a phenomenon known as enhanced diffusion. In the presence of substrate gradients, enhanced diffusion induces enzymatic drift, resulting in a non-homogeneous enzyme distribution. In this work, we study the behavior of enzyme-loaded vesicles exposed to external substrate gradients using a combination of computer simulations and analytical modeling. We observe that the spatially inhomogeneous enzyme profiles generated by enhanced diffusion result in a pressure gradient across the vesicle, which leads to macroscopically observable effects, such as deformation and self-propulsion of the vesicle. Our analytical model allows us to characterize dependence of the velocity of propulsion on experimentally tunable parameters. The effects predicted by our work provide an avenue for further validation of enhanced diffusion, and might be leveraged for the design of novel synthetic cargo transporters, such as targeted drug delivery systems.

Keywords: Enhanced Diffusion; Self-Propulsion; Microswimmer; Vesicle