Equilibrium diffusion, thermodynamics, and rheology of confined Brownian suspensions

Computational modeling of spherically confined, hydrodynamically interacting colloids has led to a new framework for modeling biological cells. While modeling of cellular behavior is robust in atomistic-scale structural biology, with little time evolution, and kinetics-based systems-biology, which abstracts away space, many cellular processes operate over colloidal length scales, where interparticle interactions and particle motion play central and nontrivial roles in whole-cell behavior. Here, we present the results of our dynamic simulation studies using both Confined Stokesian Dynamics and Confined Brownian Dynamics algorithms. We compare the role of thermodynamic structure induced by confinement on the short- and long-time transport properties with and without hydrodynamic interactions. Additionally, we find relations between the variables of particle size and volume fraction within the confinement to rheological properties, such as osmotic pressure and viscosity, and highlight how these findings can play an important role in understanding how prokaryotic cells regulate their function.