Differences in enantiomeric diffusion can lead to selective chiral amplification.

A fundamental question associated with chirality is how mixtures containing equal amounts of interconverting enantiomers can spontaneously convert to systems enriched in only one of them. Enantiomers typically have similar chemical properties, but can exhibit distinct reactivity under specific conditions, and these differences can be used to bias the system's composition in favor of one enantiomer. Transport properties are also expected to differ for enantiomers in chiral solvents, but the role of such differences in chiral symmetry breaking has not been clarified yet.

Quantifying Catalysis at the Origin of Life.

The construction of hypothetical environments to produce organic molecules such as metabolic intermediates or amino acids is the subject of ongoing research into the emergence of life. Experiments specifically focused on an anabolic approach typically rely on a mineral catalyst to facilitate the supply of organics that may have produced prebiotic building blocks for life. Alternatively to a true catalytic system, a mineral could be sacrificially oxidized in the production of organics, necessitating the emergent 'life' to turn to virgin materials for each iteration of metabolic processes.

Spontaneous mirror symmetry breaking in reaction-diffusion systems: ambivalent role of the achiral precursor.

The behaviour of a Frank-like chemical network model featuring autocatalytic production of chiral enantiomers from achiral reactants is studied numerically in 1D and 2D systems using fluctuating initial conditions and accounting for diffusion processes. Our results reveal that the achiral substrate concentration can play an ambivalent role. It is shown that when the achiral reactant concentration is maintained constant and homogeneous in 1D systems, global homochirality is not systematically reached when the size of the system or the achiral reactant concentration are increased.

Initial source of heterogeneity in a model for cell fate decision in the early mammalian embryo.

During development, cells from a population of common progenitors evolve towards different fates characterized by distinct levels of specific transcription factors, a process known as cell differentiation. This evolution is governed by gene regulatory networks modulated by intercellular signalling. In order to evolve towards distinct fates, cells forming the population of common progenitors must display some heterogeneity.

Connecting gene expression to cellular movement: A transport model for cell migration.

The adhesion properties and the mobility of biological cells play key roles in the propagation of cancer. These properties are expected to depend on intracellular processes and on the concentrations of chemicals inside the cell. While most existing reaction-diffusion models for cell migration consider that cell mobility and proliferation rate are constant or depend on an external diffusing species, they do not include the gene expression dynamics taking place in moving cells that affect cellular transport.

Stochastic thermodynamics based on an Einstein-Boltzmann definition of fluctuating entropy.

Stochastic thermodynamics is an extension of classical nonequilibrium thermodynamics to small systems, where fluctuations are expected to play an important role. A central difficulty met when developing such an extension is how to define a nonequilibrium fluctuating entropy. Typically, the expression used is based on Gibbs' formula for entropy at equilibrium.

Reconstructing stochastic attractors from nanoscale experiments on a non-equilibrium reaction.

We studied the catalytic NO2(g) + H2(g)/Pt system on model platinum catalysts with nanoscale spatial resolution by means of field emission microscopy (FEM). While the surface of the catalyst is in a non-reactive state at low H2 partial pressure, bursts of activity are observed when increasing this parameter. These kinetic instabilities subsequently evolve towards self-sustained periodic oscillations for a wide range of pressures.

Stochastic approach to irreversible thermodynamics.

An extension of classical irreversible thermodynamics pioneered by Ilya Prigogine is developed, in which fluctuations of macroscopic observables accounting for microscopic-scale processes are incorporated. The contribution of the fluctuations to the entropy production is derived from a generalized entropy balance equation and expressed in terms of the fluctuating variables, via an extended local equilibrium Ansatz and in terms of the probability distributions of these variables. The approach is illustrated on reactive systems involving linear and nonlinear steps, and the role of the distance from equilibrium and of the nonlinearities is assessed.

Modelling the propagation of a dynamical signature in gene expression mediated by the transport of extracellular microRNAs.

Extracellular microRNAs (miRNAs) carried by exosomes can play a key role in cell-to-cell communication. Deregulation of miRNA expression and exosome secretion have been related to pathological conditions such as cancer. While it is known that circulating miRNAs can alter gene expression in recipient cells, it remains unclear how significant the dynamical impact of these extracellular miRNAs is.

Nonlinear behavior and fluctuation-induced dynamics in the photosensitive Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction.

The photosensitive Belousov-Zhabotinsky (pBZ) reaction has been used extensively to study the properties of chemical oscillators. In particular, recent experiments revealed the existence of complex spatiotemporal dynamics for systems consisting of coupled micelles (V < 10 L) or droplets (V ≈ [10-10] L) in which the pBZ reaction takes place. These results have been mostly understood in terms of reaction-diffusion models.

Comment on "Flow-induced arrest of spatiotemporal chaos and transition to a stationary pattern in the Gray-Scott model".

In this Comment, we review the results of pattern formation in a reaction-diffusion-advection system following the kinetics of the Gray-Scott model. A recent paper by Das [Phys. Rev.

Emergence of Chemical Oscillations from Nanosized Target Patterns.

This work investigates experimentally the mechanism by which chemical oscillations emerge in a nanometric system. We monitor the spatiotemporal dynamics of an oscillating reaction on the surface of a nanosized three-dimensional Pt model catalyst. Using high-resolution field emission techniques, we are able to show that the oscillations are generated by nanoscale chemical target patterns of much shorter characteristic time than the period with which the oscillations occur.

Stochastic thermodynamics of reactive systems: An extended local equilibrium approach.

The recently developed extended local equilibrium approach to stochastic thermodynamics is applied to reactive systems. The properties of the fluctuating entropy and entropy production are analyzed for general linear and for prototypical nonlinear kinetic processes. It is shown that nonlinear kinetics typically induces deviations of the mean entropy production from its value in the deterministic (mean-field) limit.

Reconstructing the micrometeorological dynamics of the southern Amazonian transitional forest.

In this work, we reconstruct and analyze the micrometeorological dynamics of the transitional forest located south of the Amazon basin. For this, we use time series of micrometeorological variables collected over five years in the transitional forest of Mato Grosso (Brazil). We employ local feature analysis, a recently proposed extension of principal component analysis, to extract the most relevant physical variables from this set.

Spatiotemporal chaos from bursting dynamics.

In this paper, we study the emergence of spatiotemporal chaos from mixed-mode oscillations, by using an extended Oregonator model. We show that bursting dynamics consisting of fast/slow mixed mode oscillations along a single attractor can lead to spatiotemporal chaotic dynamics, although the spatially homogeneous solution is itself non-chaotic. This behavior is observed far from the Hopf bifurcation and takes the form of a spatiotemporal intermittency where the system locally alternates between the fast and the slow phases of the mixed mode oscillations.

Fluctuating Dynamics of Nanoscale Chemical Oscillations: Theory and Experiments.

Chemical oscillations are observed in a variety of reactive systems, including biological cells, for the functionality of which they play a central role. However, at such scales, molecular fluctuations are expected to endanger the regularity of these behaviors. The question of the mechanism by which robust oscillations can nevertheless emerge is still open.

Defect-mediated turbulence and transition to spatiotemporal intermittency in the Gray-Scott model.

In this paper, we show that the Gray-Scott model is able to produce defect-mediated turbulence. This regime emerges from the limit cycle, close or far from the Hopf bifurcation, but always right before the Andronov homoclinic bifurcation of the homogeneous system. After this bifurcation, as the control parameter is further changed, the system starts visiting more and more frequently the stable node of the model.

Stationary spots and stationary arcs induced by advection in a one-activator, two-inhibitor reactive system.

This paper studies the spatiotemporal dynamics of a reaction-diffusion-advection system corresponding to an extension of the Oregonator model, which includes two inhibitors instead of one. We show that when the reaction-diffusion, two-dimensional problem displays stationary patterns the addition of a plug flow can induce the emergence of new types of stationary structures. These patterns take the form of spots or arcs, the size and the spacing of which can be controlled by the flow.

Towards an efficient multiscale modeling of low-dimensional reactive systems: study of numerical closure procedures.

We study a numerical closure approach for systems of chemically reacting systems [corrected] on lattices with low-dimensional support, for which a mean-field approximation is insufficiently accurate because of lateral interaction on the lattice. We introduce a hierarchy of macroscopic state variables, taking particle clusters into account, whose time evolution is obtained via microscopic (kinetic Monte Carlo) simulation. The macroscopic state variables are chosen such that they can be [corrected] straightforwardly conserved during reconstruction of a microscopic configuration (the so-called lifting step).