Diving into the Free Energy: Part 1

  Get ready to dive into the Free Energy! Cells can be described as systems made of different phases. For instance, biomolecular condensates are dense droplets of proteins that coexist with the rest of the cytoplasm. Thermodynamics is a helpful theoretical framework to understand phases in…

Diving into the Free Energy: Part 2

  Get ready to dive into the Free Energy! If we want to understand phases in cells we need to talk about the Free Energy of a thermodynamic system. This is the second part of the video “Diving into the Free Energy”. In this video, we will understand how thermodynamic mixtures reach…

How do single molecules move in and out of condensates?

  Cells organize their interior into functional compartments, some without an enclosing membrane. These dense liquid droplets of biomolecules coexist with the surrounding environment like oil drops in water constantly exchanging material with it. How is the random movement of single…

A quick intro to Complexity

The Earth, which once was a messy ball of melted rock, is now teeming with complex living creatures extraordinarily adapted to their ecosystem. But the second law of thermodynamics tells us that systems spontaneously tend towards disorder and structures states, just like milk tends to mix with…

A quick intro to Irreversibility

Have you ever seen a movie backwards in time? How did you figure out that the time was flowing backwards? This could seem a silly question. But think about it. It strongly depends on the what process the movie was showing! If you see many pieces of broken glass coming together from different…

Molecular Assembly Lines in Active Droplets

  Cells assemble structures that have lots of molecules. How can such complicated structures be reliably assembled? We propose that cells could be organizing an assembly line process for the construction. We show how this could be organized inside droplets. In this video we explain our recent…

A quick intro to the Phase Diagram

Phase Diagrams are graphic representations that help understand many physical systems such as magnets and pure substances like water. These diagrams also help us understand how dense droplets of biomolecules, called Biomolecular Condensates, form inside cells. Phase Diagrams predict under which…

A quick intro to Entropy

Have you ever seen a tepid cup of coffee getting hot? Or a pile of sand grains organizing themselves into a sand castle? It would be strange, right? But why? The reason is behind one of the most fundamental and general laws of physics: The Second Law of Thermodynamics. Prepared by Mariona Esquerda…

A quick intro to the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Have you ever seen a tepid cup of coffee getting hot? Or a pile of sand grains organizing themselves into a sand castle? It would be strange, right? But why? The reason is behind one of the most fundamental and general laws of physics: The Second Law of Thermodynamics. Prepared by Mariona Esquerda…

A quick intro to Phase Separation

Ink and water mix but oil and water don’t. We all know this. But why? Mixing and demixing are relevant processes for many different systems: from the air, you breathe to metallic alloys on your car wheels, and to the smoothie on your breakfast. Recent research shows that these processes also take…