Phase transitions in chromatin: Mesoscopic and mean-field approaches.

By means of a minimal physical model, we investigate the interplay of two phase transitions at play in chromatin organization: (1) liquid-liquid phase separation within the fluid solvating chromatin, resulting in the formation of biocondensates; and (2) the coil-globule crossover of the chromatin fiber, which drives the condensation or extension of the chain. In our model, a species representing a domain of chromatin is embedded in a binary fluid. This fluid phase separates to form a droplet rich in a macromolecule (B).

Marangoni-driven nonlinear dynamics of bimolecular frontal systems: a general classification for equal diffusion coefficients.

When bimolecular fronts form in solutions, their dynamics is likely to be affected by chemically driven convection such as buoyancy- and Marangoni-driven flows. It is known that front dynamics in the presence of buoyancy-driven convection can be predicted solely on the basis of the one-dimensional reaction-diffusion concentration profiles but that those predictions fail for Marangoni-driven convection. With a two-dimensional reaction-diffusion-Marangoni convection model, we analyze here convective effects on the time scalings of the front properties, together with the influence of reaction reversibility and of the ratio of initial reactants' concentrations on the front dynamics.

Critical Role of Layer Thickness in Frontal Polymerization.

Thermal frontal polymerization (FP) is a chemical process during which a cold monomer-initiator mixture is converted into a hot polymer as a polymerization front propagates in the system due to the interplay between heat diffusion and the exothermicity of the reaction. The theoretical description of FP generally focuses on one-dimensional (1D) reaction-diffusion (RD) models where the effect of heat losses is encoded into an effective parameter in the heat equation. We show here the limits of such 1D models to describe FP under nonadiabatic conditions.

Complex dynamics of interacting fronts in a simple A+B→C reaction-diffusion system.

Pattern interaction has so far been restricted to systems with relatively complex reaction schemes, such as activator-inhibitor systems, that lead to rich spatio-temporal dynamics. Surprisingly, a simple second-order chemical reaction is capable of generating similar complex phenomena, such as attractive or repulsive interaction modes between the localized reaction zones (or fronts). We illustrate the latter statement both analytically and numerically with two initially separated A+B→C reaction-diffusion fronts when the solution of B is initially confined between two solutions of A.

Surface tension- and buoyancy-driven flows across horizontally propagating chemical fronts.

Chemical reactions can interplay with hydrodynamic flows to generate various complex phenomena. Because of their relevance in many research areas, chemically-induced hydrodynamic flows have attracted increasing attention in the last decades. In this context, we propose to give a review of the past and recent theoretical and experimental works which have considered the interaction of such flows with chemical fronts, i.