Runaway transition in irreversible polymer condensation with cyclization Panoukidou, Maria Weir, Simon Sorichetti, Valerio ; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9645-6576 Fosado, Yair Gutierrez Lenz, Martin Michieletto, Davide ddc:530 The process of polymer condensation, i.e., the formation of bonds between reactive end groups, is ubiquitous in both industry and biology. Here we study generic systems undergoing polymer condensation in competition with cyclization. Using a generalized Smoluchowski theory, molecular dynamics simulations and experiments with DNA and ATP-consuming T4 ligase, we find that this system displays a transition, from a ring-dominated regime with finite-length chains at infinite time to a linear-polymers-dominated one with chains that keep growing in time. Finally, we show that fluids prepared close to the transition may have widely different compositions and rheology at large condensation times. American Physical Society 2024 info:eu-repo/semantics/article doc-type:article text http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_2df8fbb1 https://research-explorer.ista.ac.at/record/17050 https://research-explorer.ista.ac.at/download/17050/17055 Panoukidou M, Weir S, Sorichetti V, Fosado YG, Lenz M, Michieletto D. Runaway transition in irreversible polymer condensation with cyclization. <i>Physical Review Research</i>. 2024;6(2). doi:<a href="https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.6.023189">10.1103/PhysRevResearch.6.023189</a> eng info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.6.023189 info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/e-issn/2643-1564 info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/arxiv/2210.14010 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess