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Depletion-driven competition and sharp decision-making in condensate computation

Investigate how depletion-driven competition among phases that share limiting components operates in the context of phase separation and computation, and determine how these effects can be harnessed to produce precise molecular decisions.

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Background

In the canonical ensemble, kinetic competition between phases that share a limiting component can amplify small nucleation-rate differences, depleting shared resources and producing winner-take-all outcomes that sharpen decisions. Related effects are known in gradients and multicomponent self-assembly.

How these competition mechanisms function within phase-separation-based computation—and how to control and utilize them—remains incompletely explored.

References

While these effects have yet to be fully explored in the context of phase separation and computation, they suggest that even modest physical asymmetries can be harnessed to produce precise molecular decisions.

— Could Living Cells Use Phase Transitions to Process Information? (2507.23384 - Murugan et al., 31 Jul 2025) in Section III, Subsection "Physical determinants of computational abilities" (paragraph "Competition leads to sharper decisions")