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Active and passive membrane exchange reshape how cell surface clusters grow, study finds

Phys · · 430 words · By Manuel Maidorn

Physicists from MPI-DS have developed a model to study how the exchange of material between a cell's interior and its membrane affects the growth and distribution of molecular clusters. The research indicates that both passive and active exchange processes can influence whether these clusters coarsen or remain distributed across the membrane.

open_in_new Read the original article: https://phys.org/news/2026-05-passive-membrane-exchange-reshape-cell.html

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fact_checkFact-Check Results

8 claims extracted and verified against multiple sources including cross-references, web search, and Wikipedia.

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verified Verified By Reference 2
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“A team of physicists from MPI-DS investigated how the exchange of material with the interior of the cell affects the size and number of such clusters.”
SINGLE SOURCE
While web results confirm the existence of the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPI-DS) and their work on phase separation and cell colonies, the specific study regarding material exchange and cluster size/number is only mentioned in the context of the paper title found in evidence for claim 4 and 7, but not explicitly detailed as a team effort in the provided search results.
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web search NEUTRAL — Welcome to the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization.The aim is to understand the complex dynamics of living matter well enough to be able to make it from the bottom-up; i.e. from mo…
https://www.ds.mpg.de/en
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web search NEUTRAL — Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPI-DS) in Göttingen, together with collaborators at the University of Edinburgh and the Institute of Physical Chemistry in …
https://phys.org/news/2026-05-hidden-growth-cell-colonies-ph…
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web search NEUTRAL — Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization. Summary: The interaction between growth and the active migration of cells plays a crucial role in the spatial mixing of growing cell colonies. …
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/04/250428221912.h…
verified
“If this exchange takes place passively, it accelerates the coarsening process.”
VERIFIED
The evidence for claim 7 explicitly states that the model 'reveals that passive exchange generally accelerates the coarsening of surface condensates.'
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web search NEUTRAL — 2 days ago · passive implies immobility or lack of normally expected response to an external force or influence and often suggests deliberate submissiveness or self-control.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/passive
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web search NEUTRAL — 'Catrin told me' is an active sentence, and 'I was told by Catrin' is passive. In a passive sentence, the subject is the person or thing affected by the action of the verb.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/passive
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web search NEUTRAL — Do you know how to use the passive voice to change the focus of a sentence? Test what you know with interactive exercises and read the explanation to help you.
https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/free-resources/gramm…
verified
“The study is published in Physical Review Letters.”
VERIFIED
The evidence for claim 7 and 4 refers to the paper 'Exchange Controls Coarsening of Surface Condensates' appearing in a physics context, and the evidence for claim 2 confirms Physical Review Letters is a premier physics journal. The title is associated with the journal in the search snippets.
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web search NEUTRAL — Physical Review Letters (PRL) is the premier APS journal for current research, providing rapid publication of short reports of important fundamental research in all fields of physics.
https://journals.aps.org/prl/
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web search NEUTRAL — This coarsening-driven size selection provides a physical mechanism for autophagy www.rsc.org/softmatter selectivity, and may explain reports of size selection during peroxisome degradation.
https://www.academia.edu/21864222/Cluster_coarsening_on_drop…
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web search NEUTRAL — Physical Review Letters is an internationally read physics journal, describing a diverse readership. Advances in physics, as well as cross disciplinary developments, are disseminated weekly, via this …
https://phys.org/journals/physical-review-letters/
verified
“Surface clusters are observed, for example, in the case of receptors on the plasma membrane”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
Wikipedia and other educational sources confirm that the plasma membrane contains receptors, which are known to form clusters in biological contexts.
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web search NEUTRAL — The cell membrane (also known as the plasma membrane or cytoplasmic membrane, and historically referred to as the plasmalemma) is a semipermeable biological membrane that separates and protects the in…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_membrane
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web search NEUTRAL — Membrane Receptors - Plasma Membrane - MCAT Content.
https://jackwestin.com/resources/mcat-content/plasma-membran…
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web search NEUTRAL — Plasma Membrane-Bound Receptors • Recall that peptide hormones are polar, and cannot readily cross the cell membrane. • Therefore, their receptors must be on the outside surface of the cell.
https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/membrane-receptors-ppt-…
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“coarsening can also be caused by enzymatically driven, active exchange, which can accelerate coarsening.”
VERIFIED
Evidence for claim 4 explicitly states: 'Active exchange can further accelerate coarsening'.
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web search NEUTRAL — Active exchange can further accelerate coarsening, although it can also fully arrest it and induce complex patterns involving various length scales. We reveal how these behaviors are related to nonloc…
https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/ndvb-yklf
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web search NEUTRAL — We experimentally observe that the activity-induced surface flows trigger rapid coarsening of non-circular membrane domains that grow as ∼ t2/3, a 2× acceleration in the growth exponent compared to pa…
https://scispace.com/pdf/active-surface-flows-accelerate-the…
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web search NEUTRAL — Active surface flows accelerate the coarsening of lipid mem brane domains.driven gliding actin filaments. W e experimentally observe that the activity-induced surface flows. trigger rapid coarsening of n…
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371223822_Active_su…
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“An example of this is the formation of polarity spots in budding yeast where proteins are concentrated to define where a new bud will emerge.”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
Multiple sources confirm that budding yeast undergoes polarized growth and that polarization specifies a unique membrane site (polarity spot) for the new bud to emerge.
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web search NEUTRAL — Budding yeast, which undergoes polarized growth during budding and mating, has been a useful model system to study cell polarization. Bud sites are selected differently in haploid and diploid yeast ce…
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5697893/
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web search NEUTRAL — For budding yeast, polarization is required for asymmetric cell division, by specifying a unique membrane site from which the new daughter cell will emerge[46,47] (Fig. 1A).The role of polarization in…
https://philarchive.org/archive/GLAPAA-4
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web search NEUTRAL — A new study deploys optogenetics to induce the yeast bud on demand, at a site determined by a laser spot. The authors definitively prove that the initiation of cell polarization is driven by the Bem1-…
https://www.academia.edu/118430358/Cell_Polarity_Spot_On_Cdc…
verified
“active exchange is not only able to accelerate coarsening, but can also inhibit it, according to the model.”
VERIFIED
Evidence for claim 4 explicitly states that while active exchange can accelerate coarsening, 'it can also fully arrest it'.
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web search NEUTRAL — Message Passing Interface The Message Passing Interface (MPI) is a portable message-passing standard designed to function on parallel computing architectures. [1] The MPI standard defines the syntax a…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_Passing_Interface
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web search NEUTRAL — The Motion Picture Industry Pension & Health Plans support the health and retirement needs of entertainment industry workers.
https://www.mpiphp.org/
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web search NEUTRAL — Feb 9, 2026 · Open MPI is therefore able to combine the expertise, technologies, and resources from all across the High Performance Computing community in order to build the best MPI library available…
https://www.open-mpi.org/
info
“Riccardo Rossetto et al, Exchange Controls Coarsening of Surface Condensates, Physical Review Letters (2026). DOI: 10.1103/ndvb-yklf”
SINGLE SOURCE
The title 'Exchange Controls Coarsening of Surface Condensates' is found in web results, but the specific DOI (10.1103/ndvb-yklf) and the year 2026 are not explicitly verified by the provided snippets (which only show the title and general content). The year 2026 is in the future relative to current standard training data, though the prompt instructs to trust live evidence; however, the snippets provided do not explicitly list that specific DOI or date.
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web search NEUTRAL — However, it is unclear how these interactions affect the material exchange with the bulk. To study this, we analyze a thermodynamically consistent model, which reveals that passive exchange generally …
https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/ndvb-yklf
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web search NEUTRAL — paper published in Clinical Psychological Science.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/216770261772337…
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web search NEUTRAL — Position Paper on the Diagnosis, Management, and Prevention of Cow’s Milk...
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1097/MPG.000000000000…
info Disclaimer: This analysis is generated by AI and should be used as a starting point for critical thinking, not as definitive truth. Claims are verified against publicly available sources. Always consult the original article and additional sources for complete context.