8th Liquid Matter Conference September 6-10, 2011 Wien, Austria ...

P10.14Tue 611:23-14:00Thermodynamic stability of multi-component proteinmixturesWilliam Jacobs 1 and Daan Frenkel 11 University of Cambridge, The University Chemical Laboratory, Lensfield Road CB2 1EW,Cambridge, United KingdomMixtures with a large number of components, such as the cytosol, can undergo phase transitionsof a hybrid character, with both condensation and demixing contributions. We use a lattice modelwith a random interaction matrix to investigate the phase behaviour of such multi-componentsystems. To allow for both specificity and randomness in the interactions, we adopt bit strings toencode the strength of interactions between particles at adjacent lattice sites. The thermodynamicproperties of this model are calculated using grand-canonical Monte Carlo simulations andmulticanonical histogram reweighting techniques. We examine the sensitivity of the resultingphase diagrams to the parent composition, to outliers in the spectrum of binary interactions,and to anisotropy in individual components. With these insights, we can evaluate the reliabilityof simplified analytic statistical models in predicting the thermodynamic stability of complexmixtures.[1] R. P. Sear and J. A. Cuesta, Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 245701 (2003).14