Physics Colloquium: Living Droplets Get to Work

Prof. Eric Dufresne, Cornell University

Abstract: Living cells need to organize chemical reactions. In school, we learned that cells compartmentalize reactions using lipid bilayers. However, many functional domains don’t have a membrane and appear to be held together by liquid-like cohesion – i.e. capillarity. While we know a lot about the biochemistry of these condensates, we know relatively little about how their emergent properties affect cellular physiology. In this talk, I will describe how living cells could exploit capillary forces to drive localization, deformation, and motility.