The group has been exceptionally productive in the last months: We wrote a detailed theory work on the “Coarsening model of chromosomal crossover placement”, which explains how the positions of genetic information exchange are determined during meiosis. We showed that “Chemically Active Liquid Bridges Generate Repulsive Forces”, which is opposite to what one would expect from a passive liquid bridge. We also showed that “Advection selects pattern in multi-stable emulsions of active droplets” and that “Exchange controls coarsening of surface condensates”. These (and older works) can be thought of as “Phase separation with non-local interactions”, and our “Size control guidelines for chemically active droplets” finally allow us to understand basic mechanisms of chemically active droplets better.

We have several new manuscripts:

• flory: A Python package for finding coexisting phases in multicomponent mixtures

• Active viscoelastic condensates provide controllable mechanical anchor points

• Could Living Cells Use Phase Transitions to Process Information?

• Self-propulsion via non-transitive phase coexistence in chemically active mixtures

• Dynamics of phase separation in non-local elastic networks

We wrote a review on the physics of condensates in cells. In particular, we focus on physical processes that allow cells to regulate condensates, given that the environment is much more complex compared to typical droplets studied in soft matter physics.

We published multiple papers in the first half of 2024! We study how higher-order interactions, wall affinity, membrane binding and dimerization, as well as non-local elasticity affect phase separation. All these papers will help us to better understand how condensates form in cells.

We published a new pre-print on a theory of Elastic Microphase Separation explaining recent experiments. In the experiments, phase separation in an elastic PDMS gel lead to regular patterns whose length scale decreased for stiffer meshes. Our theory based on nonlocal elasticity explains this behavior and the observed continuous phase transition.