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Arango-Restrepo A, Barragán D, Rubi JM. Variations in activation energy and nuclei size during nucleation explain chiral symmetry breaking. Phys Chem Chem Phys 2023; 25:29032-29041. [PMID: 37860883 DOI: 10.1039/d3cp03220e] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/21/2023]
Abstract
We show that variations in enantiomer nuclei size and activation energy during the nucleation stage of crystallization are responsible for the chiral symmetry breaking resulting in excess of one of the possible enantiomers with respect to the other. By understanding the crystallisation process as a non-equilibrium self-assembly process, we quantify the enantiomeric excess through the probability distribution of the nuclei size and activation energy variations which are obtained from the free energy involved in the nucleation stage of crystallisation. We validate our theory by comparing it to Kondepudi et al. previous experimental work on sodium chlorate crystallisation. The results demonstrate that the self-assembly of enantiomeric crystals provides an explanation for chiral symmetry breaking. These findings could have practical applications for improving the production of enantiopure drugs in the pharmaceutical industry, as well as for enhancing our understanding of the origins of life since enantiomeric amino acids and monosaccharides are the building blocks of life.
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Affiliation(s)
- A Arango-Restrepo
- Departament de Física de la Matèria Condensada, Universitat de Barcelona, Avinguda Diagonal 647, 08028 Barcelona, Spain.
| | - D Barragán
- Escuela de Química, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Carrera 65 No 59A-110, Bloque 16, Núcleo El Volador, 050034 Medellín, Colombia
| | - J M Rubi
- Departament de Física de la Matèria Condensada, Universitat de Barcelona, Avinguda Diagonal 647, 08028 Barcelona, Spain.
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Arango-Restrepo A, Rubi JM. Predicting cancer stages from tissue energy dissipation. Sci Rep 2023; 13:15894. [PMID: 37741864 PMCID: PMC10517974 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-42780-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/22/2023] [Accepted: 09/14/2023] [Indexed: 09/25/2023] Open
Abstract
Understanding cancer staging in order to predict its progression is vital to determine its severity and to plan the most appropriate therapies. This task has attracted interest from different fields of science and engineering. We propose a computational model that predicts the evolution of cancer in terms of the intimate structure of the tissue, considering that this is a self-organised structure that undergoes transformations governed by non-equilibrium thermodynamics laws. Based on experimental data on the dependence of tissue configurations on their elasticity and porosity, we relate the cancerous tissue stages with the energy dissipated, showing quantitatively that tissues in more advanced stages dissipate more energy. The knowledge of this energy allows us to know the probability of observing the tissue in its different stages and the probability of transition from one stage to another. We validate our results with experimental data and statistics from the World Health Organisation. Our quantitative approach provides insights into the evolution of cancer through its different stages, important as a starting point for new and integrative research to defeat cancer.
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Affiliation(s)
- A Arango-Restrepo
- Departament de Física de la Matèria Condensada, Universitat de Barcelona, Avinguda Diagonal 647, Barcelona, 08028, Spain.
| | - J M Rubi
- Departament de Física de la Matèria Condensada, Universitat de Barcelona, Avinguda Diagonal 647, Barcelona, 08028, Spain
- Institut de Nanociencia i Nanotecnologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Carrer Marti i Franques, Barcelona, 08028, Spain
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Arango-Restrepo A, Arteaga O, Barragán D, Rubi JM. Chiral symmetry breaking induced by energy dissipation. Phys Chem Chem Phys 2023; 25:9238-9248. [PMID: 36919512 DOI: 10.1039/d2cp05939h] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 03/09/2023]
Abstract
Spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking is observed in a wide variety of systems on very different scales, from the subatomic to the cosmological. Despite its generality and importance for a large number of applications, its origin is still a matter of debate. It has been shown that the existence of a difference between the energies of the intermediate states of optical enantiomers leads to disparate production rates and thus to symmetry breaking. However, it is still unclear why this occurs. We measured for the first time the optical rotation angle of NaClO3 enantiomeric crystals in solution during their formation and found that the amount of energy needed to induce the enantiomeric excess is exactly the same as the energy dissipated per mole of solid salt calculated from the entropy production obtained from the proposed model. The irreversible nature of the process leading to entropy production thus explains the chiral symmetry breaking in the salt crystals studied. The proposed method could be used to explain the formation of self-organised structures generated by self-assembly of enantiomers arising from chiral symmetry breaking, such as those emerging in the production of advanced materials and synthetic biological tissues.
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Affiliation(s)
- A Arango-Restrepo
- Departament de Física de la Matèria Condensada, Universitat de Barcelona, Avinguda Diagonal 647, 08028 Barcelona, Spain.
| | - O Arteaga
- Departament de Física Aplicada, Universitat de Barcelona, Avinguda Diagonal 647, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
| | - D Barragán
- Escuela de Química, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Carrera 65 No 59A-110, Bloque 16, Núcleo El Volador, 050034 Medellín, Colombia
| | - J M Rubi
- Departament de Física de la Matèria Condensada, Universitat de Barcelona, Avinguda Diagonal 647, 08028 Barcelona, Spain.
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Weir JS, Christiansen N, Sandvig A, Sandvig I. Selective inhibition of excitatory synaptic transmission alters the emergent bursting dynamics of in vitro neural networks. Front Neural Circuits 2023; 17:1020487. [PMID: 36874945 PMCID: PMC9978115 DOI: 10.3389/fncir.2023.1020487] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/16/2022] [Accepted: 01/31/2023] [Indexed: 02/18/2023] Open
Abstract
Neurons in vitro connect to each other and form neural networks that display emergent electrophysiological activity. This activity begins as spontaneous uncorrelated firing in the early phase of development, and as functional excitatory and inhibitory synapses mature, the activity typically emerges as spontaneous network bursts. Network bursts are events of coordinated global activation among many neurons interspersed with periods of silencing and are important for synaptic plasticity, neural information processing, and network computation. While bursting is the consequence of balanced excitatory-inhibitory (E/I) interactions, the functional mechanisms underlying their evolution from physiological to potentially pathophysiological states, such as decreasing or increasing in synchrony, are still poorly understood. Synaptic activity, especially that related to maturity of E/I synaptic transmission, is known to strongly influence these processes. In this study, we used selective chemogenetic inhibition to target and disrupt excitatory synaptic transmission in in vitro neural networks to study functional response and recovery of spontaneous network bursts over time. We found that over time, inhibition resulted in increases in both network burstiness and synchrony. Our results indicate that the disruption in excitatory synaptic transmission during early network development likely affected inhibitory synaptic maturity which resulted in an overall decrease in network inhibition at later stages. These findings lend support to the importance of E/I balance in maintaining physiological bursting dynamics and, conceivably, information processing capacity in neural networks.
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Affiliation(s)
- Janelle Shari Weir
- Department of Neuromedicine and Movement Science, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
| | - Nicholas Christiansen
- Department of Neuromedicine and Movement Science, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
| | - Axel Sandvig
- Department of Neuromedicine and Movement Science, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.,Department of Neurology and Clinical Neurophysiology, St. Olav's University Hospital, Trondheim, Norway.,Division of Neuro, Head and Neck, Department of Pharmacology and Clinical Neurosciences, Umeå University Hospital, Umeå, Sweden.,Division of Neuro, Head and Neck, Department of Community Medicine and Rehabilitation, Umeå University Hospital, Umeå, Sweden
| | - Ioanna Sandvig
- Department of Neuromedicine and Movement Science, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
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Torrenegra-Rico JD, Arango-Restrepo A, Rubí JM. Nonequilibrium thermodynamics of Janus particle self-assembly. J Chem Phys 2022; 157:104103. [DOI: 10.1063/5.0097802] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/14/2022] Open
Abstract
We compute the energetic cost of formation of Janus particle structures. Using an approach that couples particle dynamics to the evolution of fuel concentration in the medium, which we consider to be initially inhomogeneous, we show the different types of emerging structures. The energy dissipated in the formation of such structures is obtained from the entropy production rate, which is a non-monotonic function of the fraction of assembled particles and, thus, different in each self-assembly regime. An analysis of the free energy of these particles allows us to establish a thermodynamic criterion of structure formation based on the behavior of chemical potential as a function of the fraction of assembled particles.
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Affiliation(s)
- J. D. Torrenegra-Rico
- Departament de Física de la Matèria Condensada, Facultat de Física, Universitat de Barcelona, Avinguda Diagonal 647, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
| | - A. Arango-Restrepo
- Departament de Física de la Matèria Condensada, Facultat de Física, Universitat de Barcelona, Avinguda Diagonal 647, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
| | - J. M. Rubí
- Departament de Física de la Matèria Condensada, Facultat de Física, Universitat de Barcelona, Avinguda Diagonal 647, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
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Guzmán E, Martínez-Pedrero F, Calero C, Maestro A, Ortega F, Rubio RG. A broad perspective to particle-laden fluid interfaces systems: from chemically homogeneous particles to active colloids. Adv Colloid Interface Sci 2022; 302:102620. [PMID: 35259565 DOI: 10.1016/j.cis.2022.102620] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/04/2021] [Revised: 02/22/2022] [Accepted: 02/23/2022] [Indexed: 01/12/2023]
Abstract
Particles adsorbed to fluid interfaces are ubiquitous in industry, nature or life. The wide range of properties arising from the assembly of particles at fluid interface has stimulated an intense research activity on shed light to the most fundamental physico-chemical aspects of these systems. These include the mechanisms driving the equilibration of the interfacial layers, trapping energy, specific inter-particle interactions and the response of the particle-laden interface to mechanical perturbations and flows. The understanding of the physico-chemistry of particle-laden interfaces becomes essential for taking advantage of the particle capacity to stabilize interfaces for the preparation of different dispersed systems (emulsions, foams or colloidosomes) and the fabrication of new reconfigurable interface-dominated devices. This review presents a detailed overview of the physico-chemical aspects that determine the behavior of particles trapped at fluid interfaces. This has been combined with some examples of real and potential applications of these systems in technological and industrial fields. It is expected that this information can provide a general perspective of the topic that can be exploited for researchers and technologist non-specialized in the study of particle-laden interfaces, or for experienced researcher seeking new questions to solve.
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Affiliation(s)
- Eduardo Guzmán
- Departamento de Química Física, Facultad de Ciencias Químicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria s/n, 28040 Madrid, Spain; Unidad de Materia Condensada, Instituto Pluridisciplinar, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Paseo Juan XXIII 1, 28040 Madrid, Spain.
| | - Fernando Martínez-Pedrero
- Departamento de Química Física, Facultad de Ciencias Químicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria s/n, 28040 Madrid, Spain.
| | - Carles Calero
- Departament de Física de la Matèria Condensada, Facultat de Física, Universitat de Barcelona, Avenida Diagonal 647, 08028 Barcelona, Spain; Institut de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia, IN2UB, Universitat de Barcelona, Avenida, Diagonal 647, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
| | - Armando Maestro
- Centro de Fı́sica de Materiales (CSIC, UPV/EHU)-Materials Physics Center MPC, Paseo Manuel de Lardizabal 5, 20018 San Sebastián, Spain; IKERBASQUE-Basque Foundation for Science, Plaza Euskadi 5, 48009 Bilbao, Spain
| | - Francisco Ortega
- Departamento de Química Física, Facultad de Ciencias Químicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria s/n, 28040 Madrid, Spain; Unidad de Materia Condensada, Instituto Pluridisciplinar, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Paseo Juan XXIII 1, 28040 Madrid, Spain
| | - Ramón G Rubio
- Departamento de Química Física, Facultad de Ciencias Químicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria s/n, 28040 Madrid, Spain; Unidad de Materia Condensada, Instituto Pluridisciplinar, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Paseo Juan XXIII 1, 28040 Madrid, Spain.
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