Active Segregation Dynamics in the Living Cell

TL;DR

This paper explores nonequilibrium active phase segregation in living cells, highlighting novel dynamics like anomalous growth, mesoscale domains, and fluctuation-dominated steady states, through an active Flory-Huggins theory and its biological implications.

Contribution

It introduces an active Flory-Huggins model incorporating active stresses, connecting theoretical work with recent models, and elucidates unique active segregation phenomena in cellular contexts.

Findings

Identification of anomalous growth dynamics in active segregation

Observation of mesoscale domain formation above equilibrium Tc

Discovery of fluctuation-dominated phase ordering (FDPO) in active systems

Abstract

In this paper, we bring together our efforts in identifying and understanding nonequilibrium phase segregation driven by active processes in the living cell, with special focus on the segregation of cell membrane components driven by active contractile stresses arising from cortical actomyosin. This also has implications for active segregation dynamics in membraneless regions within the cytoplasm and nucleus (3d). We formulate an active version of the Flory-Huggins theory that incorporates a contribution from fluctuating active stresses. Apart from knitting together some of our past theoretical work in a comprehensive narrative, we highlight some new results, and establish a correspondence with recent studies on Active Model B/B+. We point to the many unusual aspects of the dynamics of active phase segregation, such as (i) anomalous growth dynamics, (ii) coarsening accompanied by propulsion and coalescence of domains that exhibit nonreciprocal effects, (iii) segregation into mesoscale domains, (iv) emergence of a nonequilibrium phase segregated steady state characterised by strong macroscopic fluctuations (fluctuation dominated phase ordering (FDPO)), and (v) mesoscale segregation even above the equilibrium Tc. Apart from its implications for actively driven segregation of binary fluids, these ideas are at the heart of an Active Emulsion description of the lateral organisation of molecules on the plasma membrane of living cells, whose full molecular elaboration appears elsewhere.