A new PNAS study reveals "delay-facilitated assembly"—a counter-intuitive mechanism where slow exchange between reaction compartments significantly outperforms fast exchange. By turning the "reservoir" into a control knob, this approach maximizes yield and minimizes time, offering a blueprint for building reliable synthetic systems that mimic nature’s efficiency.
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Can we build predictive theories for self-organizing systems—spanning fluids, diffusion–reaction systems, soft/active matter, and living systems—without tracking every microscopic detail? Yes: by exploiting universality, symmetry, and conservation laws, and coarse-graining to reveal instability mechanisms, mesoscopic laws, and scaling behavior.
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