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research article

Phase boundaries promote chemical reactions through localized fluxes

Shelest, Alexandra  
•
Le Roy, Hugo  
•
Busiello, Daniel M.
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January 14, 2025
The Journal of Chemical Physics

One of the hypothesized functions of biomolecular condensates is to act as chemical reactors, where chemical reactions can be modulated, i.e., accelerated or slowed down, while substrate molecules enter and products exit from the condensate. Similarly, the components themselves that take part in the architectural integrity of condensates might be modified by active (energy consuming, non-equilibrium) processes, e.g., by ATPase chaperones or by kinases and phosphatases. In this work, we study how the presence of spatial inhomogeneities, such as in the case of liquid-liquid phase separation, affects active chemical reactions and results in the presence of directional flows of matter, which are one of the hallmarks of non-equilibrium processes. We establish the minimal conditions for the existence of such spatial currents, and we furthermore find that these fluxes are maximal at the condensate interface. These results propose that some condensates might be most efficient as chemical factories due to their interfaces rather than their volumes and could suggest a possible biological reason for the observed abundance of small non-fusing condensates inside the cell, thus maximizing their surface and the associated fluxes.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1063/5.0242782
Scopus ID

2-s2.0-85214944727

PubMed ID

39783969

Author(s)
Shelest, Alexandra  

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Le Roy, Hugo  

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Busiello, Daniel M.

Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems

De Los Rios, Paolo  

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Date Issued

2025-01-14

Published in
The Journal of Chemical Physics
Volume

162

Issue

2

Article Number

024112

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
LBS  
Available on Infoscience
January 25, 2025
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/244310
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