Biomolecular Phase Separation: From Molecular Driving Forces to Macroscopic Properties

Frictional Forces and Amontons’ Law: From the Molecular to the Macroscopic Scale

We review the historical and modern understanding of the most basic equation of friction, Amontons’ law, which describes phenomena that were already understood and studied by Leonardo da Vinci 500 years ago. This law states that for any two materials the (lateral) friction force is directly proportional to the (normal) applied load, with a constant of proportionality, the friction coefficient, ...

D 1 Collective behavior of active Brownian particles: From microscopic clustering to macroscopic phase separation

Macroscopic properties of carbon nanotubes from molecular-mechanics simulations

Results of molecular-mechanics simulations of axial and torsional deformations of a single wall carbon nanotube are used to find Young’s modulus, the shear modulus, and the wall thickness of an equivalent continuum tube made of a linear elastic isotropic material. These values are used to compare the response of the continuum tube in bending and buckling with that obtained from the molecular me...

Macroscopic Description of Phase Separation in the 2D Ising Model

We review recent results about the macroscopic description of phase separation in the 2D Ising model, with special emphasis on boundary effects and related surface phase transitions. In particular, after having recalled some facts about the wetting transition, we describe two situations in which this transition has major consequences at the macroscopic scale. We also briefly describe a more gen...

A macroscopic description of biomolecular transport.

We present a general algorithm for computing the effective diffusion coefficient of a general class of biomolecular transport processes. The method can be applied to spatially discrete and continuous processes and takes into account the effects of thermal diffusion and chemical kinetics. To provide an illustration of the algorithm, the problem of protein translocation is considered.