Physics of mesoscale liquid condensates
Location: Yangtze River Center in Liyang, China (No.1, Zhongguancun Avenue, Liyang City, Jiangsu Province)
Organisers
Phase-separated liquids are widely employed in industrial processes, food preparation, paint formulation, separation technology, to name but a few examples. Although the use of phase-separated systems has a long history, the landscape has changed dramatically during the past decade with the discovery that living cells can create and dissolve phase-separated mesoscale droplets on demand and use them as functional tools to regulate key cellular processes. Not surprisingly, this discovery has stimulated much interest and research on the biology side. However, the ability to control the formation and dissolution of meso-scale droplets also offers the possibility to control non-biological processes in ways that have barely been explored.
Biological systems can carry out molecular separations and reactions with efficiencies and selectivities that are, thus far, unachievable in man-made devices. During the past decade it has become clear that cells exploit the physical chemistry of liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) to separate or combine biologically active molecules. This finding has resulted in an explosive growth in the study of biomolecular LLPS both in vitro and in vivo. These studies have revealed that cells employ controlled phase separation as a tool to create nano-scale droplets and organelles that can sequester or separate specific target molecules.
Translating the lessons from biology to human-made micro or nanofluidic devices will enable the emergence of a new branch of micro/nanofluidic technology. This new technology is still at an early stage and requires the combination of fundamental, albeit application-inspired analysis, with the aim of arriving at a quantitative understanding of the physical principles behind controlled LLPS in confined complex multicomponent mixtures. Soft materials comprising many components pose important challenges to the manipulation and control of matter at the nano- and mesoscale. However, the efficiencies and selectivities in composition control that are thus far achievable in man-made devices are nowhere near those implemented in biological systems that employ LLPS. It is imperative to gain a quantitative understanding of the mechanisms behind the formation of liquid-like structures in complex mixtures, such as aggregates, droplets, globules, or coacervates, and their stability in different external conditions. Such understanding is essential for dynamic manipulation of soft materials at the micro- and nanoscale and would open up broad possibilities for the design of novel microfluidic technologies.
Out of the numerous challenges open in this area, we have identified three wide topics where fundamental breakthrough can be expected in the near future:
1. Mesoscale separation in active soft materials. In particular, the effects of activity and the role of non-equilibrium effects on the growth and stabilization of mesoscale liquid structures constitute a must in order to understand how to control physicochemically mulitcomponent mixtures and what the essentil differences between that control phase sepration and arrest in equilibrium and non-equilibrium mixtures.
2. Physical mechanisms for controlling phase separation of biopolymers in non-biological conditiona. In order to exploit the phenomenology of biological aggregates and arrested phase separation, we need to advance our understand the fundamental physical mechanisms of driven LLPS in multicomponent systems – combining biopolymers and chemical matter – that undergo phase separation under non-physiological conditions
3. Control and manipulation of phase-separating soft materials in complex environments. The understanding of the fundamental mechanisms and specificities associated to nonequilibrium in arrested phase separation of liquid mixtures must advance in parallel with our ability to control these systems, Soft materials composed by multicomponent mixtures are normally found or handled in complex environemnts. Therefore, we must advance in our analysis of the impact that nonequilibrium conditions and external driving forces have on liquid formation and manipulation of aggregates in complex environments, geometries and strong confinement.
References
Jure Dobnikar (Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences) - Organiser & speaker
Man Mao (Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences) - Organiser & speaker
Spain
Ignacio Pagonabarraga (University of Barcelona) - Organiser & speaker