Wow, congratulations!

In contrast, short-range interactions (e.g., non-local elasticity and Riccardo's system discussed above) show various patterns, which can be explained by a mapping to the Swift-Hohenberg model. These results demonstrates that various processes arresting droplet coarsening fall into two categories.

Filipe's work (in collaboration with Yicheng and Oliver) puts these results in context by generally studying the influence of non-local interactions onto phase separation. We find that long-range interactions (e.g., electrostatics and also chemical reactions) generally suppress phase separation.

Active processes can further control the droplet dynamics. They can either accelerate coarsening, or they can suppress it completely. In the latter case, we also find interesting states where a macroscopic droplet coexists with a patterned phase comprising many smaller spots.

Riccardo and Gerrit looked at condensates embedded in membranes, using polarity spots of yeast as an example. They showed that exchange with the bulk can strongly accelerate coarsening, allowing cells to form one spot quickly.

No, I don’t agree with such a blanket statement. Equilibrium concepts can also be useful in non-equilibrium situations. For instance, phase coexistence may hold at the interface, while active processes modulate the bulk phases. I propose a more nuanced view, depending on the concrete system.

I don’t know the details of this paper, but one generally needs to be cautious. Phase separation can be a useful conceptual framework, but since cells are complex, it can rarely be „proven“.

Marcel developed and analyzed a generalized coarsening model to explain chromosomal crossover placements during meiosis (arxiv.org/abs/2509.09521). This model provides a coherent explanation of experimental data across mutants and species!

Cathelijne discovered that the energy required to maintain Turing patterns can be reduced substantially if the involved molecules repel each other (arxiv.org/abs/2509.05093). This work permits a thermodynamic analysis of this classical reaction-diffusion system!

Oliver looked at the dynamics of phase separation in elastic networks, where non-local effects arrest coarsening and lead to patterns with a well-defined length scale (arxiv.org/abs/2508.09829). These patterns can be realized experimentally to make materials with interesting optical properties!

Yicheng discovered that driven chemical reactions between solvent components can induce a pressure difference at interfaces (arxiv.org/abs/2508.09816). This can lead to fun effects, including self-propulsion, and showcases the surprising versatility of chemically active emulsions.