Surfing on Protein Waves: Proteophoresis as a Mechanism for Bacterial Genome Partitioning.

Efficient bacterial chromosome segregation typically requires the coordinated action of a three-component machinery, fueled by adenosine triphosphate, called the partition complex. We present a phenomenological model accounting for the dynamic activity of this system that is also relevant for the physics of catalytic particles in active environments. The model is obtained by coupling simple linear reaction-diffusion equations with a proteophoresis, or "volumetric" chemophoresis, force field that arises from protein-protein interactions and provides a physically viable mechanism for complex translocation. This minimal description captures most known experimental observations: dynamic oscillations of complex components, complex separation, and subsequent symmetrical positioning. The predictions of our model are in phenomenological agreement with and provide substantial insight into recent experiments. From a nonlinear physics view point, this system explores the active separation of matter at micrometric scales with a dynamical instability between static positioning and traveling wave regimes triggered by the dynamical spontaneous breaking of rotational symmetry.

Nonlinear supratransmission in multicomponent systems.

A method is proposed to solve the challenging problem of determining the supratransmission threshold (onset of instability of harmonic boundary driving inside a band gap) in multicomponent nonintegrable nonlinear systems. It is successfully applied to the degenerate three-wave resonant interaction in a birefringent quadratic medium where the process generates spatial gap solitons. No analytic expression is known for this model showing the broad applicability of the method to nonlinear systems.

Energy transmission in the forbidden band gap of a nonlinear chain.

A nonlinear chain driven by one end may propagate energy in the forbidden band gap by means of nonlinear modes. For harmonic driving at a given frequency, the process occurs at a threshold amplitude by sudden large energy flow that we call nonlinear supratransmission. The bifurcation of energy transmission is demonstrated numerically and experimentally on the chain of coupled pendula (sine-Gordon and nonlinear Klein-Gordon equations) and sustained by an extremely simple theory.