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PRX Life

About PRX LifeOpen Access

PRX Life

PRX Life is the American Physical Society's open access journal for physics-driven research at the interface of physics and the life sciences. PRX Life publishes rigorously peer-reviewed, high-impact research spanning biological physics, quantitative biology, and living systems, from molecular and cellular scales to whole organisms and ecology. Fully open access under CC-BY 4.0, PRX Life highlights breakthrough experiments, theory, and methodology, welcoming work that bridges physics with biology, chemistry, and medicine. A premier open access venue for biological physics, PRX Life gives researchers free, permanent access to original, high-significance findings advancing the physics of living systems.

PRX Life is published by The American Physical Society, a nonprofit membership organization working to advance physics by fostering a vibrant, inclusive, and global community dedicated to science and society.
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Latest Issue

Cover image for PRX Life
On the CoverVolume 4 • Issue 3 • July - September 2026

This Roadmap clarifies terminology, core physics, biological roles, and key theoretical, computational, and experimental challenges to guide a coordinated effort toward a predictive understanding and control of biomolecular condensates. For more exciting research on this topic, see the PRX Life Collection on Physics of Biomolecular Condensates.

Read more: Roadmap for Condensates in Cell Biology

Latest Complete Issue

Vol. 4, Iss. 3
←PreviousVol. 4, Iss. 2View All Volumes and Issues

Latest Research

More latest research
Capillary Bundling of Microtubules by Condensates27 October, 2026

By combining experiments and theory, this study establishes condensate-mediated capillary forces as a distinct mechanism for microtubule bundling.

Volatile But Persistent Coexistence of Self-Compatibility and Self-Incompatibility in Plants26 October, 2026

Plants may not have to choose between selfing and outcrossing: a biophysical evolutionary model reveals a persistent mixed-mating state whose composition continues to fluctuate without settling—even in an unchanging environment—and predicts, counterintuitively, that pollen scarcity can favor self-incompatibility.

Characterizing Nonlinear Dynamics via Smooth Prototype Equivalences26 October, 2026

By mapping sparse observations to prototypical behaviors, this equation-free framework identifies driving marker genes and traces cell-cycle trajectories directly from high-dimensional single-cell gene expression data.

Reconstruction of the Bacterial Flagellar Motor's Energy Landscape, Viscous Load, and Torque Generation Across Diffusion Regimes23 October, 2026

Fluctuations are more than noise—they provide a window into the energy landscape and friction governing the bacterial flagellar motor.

Mechanosensitive Remodeling Sustains Rigidity Homeostasis and Elastic Memory in Actin Cortex Models15 October, 2026

The actin cortex stays rigid and retains elastic memory not by staying still but by continuously remodeling itself, recycling its components in response to mechanical forces.

Enzymatically Driven Remodeling of Growth Kinetics and Internal Structure in Biomolecular Condensates 8 October, 2026

Time-resolved scattering uncovers how enzymatic activity redirects the assembly pathway of biomolecular condensates, creating distinct internal structures and dynamics.

Highlights

Volatile But Persistent Coexistence of Self-Compatibility and Self-Incompatibility in Plants
Featured in Physics

Volatile But Persistent Coexistence of Self-Compatibility and Self-Incompatibility in Plants

Amit Jangid, Ohad Noy Feldheim, and Tamar Friedlander
26 October, 2026 • PRX Life, 4

Plants may not have to choose between selfing and outcrossing: a biophysical evolutionary model reveals a persistent mixed-mating state whose composition continues to fluctuate without settling—even in an unchanging environment—and predicts, counterintuitively, that pollen scarcity can favor self-incompatibility.

Roadmap for Condensates in Cell Biology
Roadmap

Roadmap for Condensates in Cell Biology

Dilimulati Aierken et al.
20 August, 2026 • PRX Life, 4

This Roadmap clarifies terminology, core physics, biological roles, and key theoretical, computational, and experimental challenges to guide a coordinated effort toward a predictive understanding and control of biomolecular condensates.

More Highlights

Featured in Physics

Unravelling Three-Dimensional Active Transport by Ciliary Arrays on Coral Surfaces

Siluvai Antony Selvan, Cesar O. Pacherres, Michael Kühl, Angus Butler, Max S. Dhillon, Linda L. Blackall, Peter W. Duck, Draga Pihler-Puzović, and Douglas R. Brumley
26 May, 2026 • PRX Life, 4
Featured in Physics

Enzymatically Driven Remodeling of Growth Kinetics and Internal Structure in Biomolecular Condensates

Tamizhmalar Sundararajan, Matteo Boccalini, Roméo Suss, Sandrine Mariot, Emerson R. Da Silva, Fernando C. Giacomelli, Austin Hubley, Theyencheri Narayanan, Alessandro Barducci, and Guillaume Tresset
8 October, 2026 • PRX Life, 4
Featured in Physics

Brownian Bridging of Chromatin States in Leukemic Cells

M. Calero, E. del Arco, M. Amores-Sánchez, D. Herráez-Aguilar, E. García-Sánchez, A. González-Murillo, J. Lalchandani, N. Caselli, J. Fernández-Castillo, A. Caamaño, M. Ramírez-Orellana, I. Mora-Jiménez, and F. Monroy
12 August, 2026 • PRX Life, 4
Featured in Physics

Nest-Level Phase Transition Drives Synchronized Activity Bursts in Ant Colonies

Michael Napoli, Simon Garnier, and Maurizio Porfiri
5 August, 2026 • PRX Life, 4

Announcements

More announcements

Congratulations to the winners of the 2026 Reviewer Excellence Award!

11 September, 2026

Our reviewers play a pivotal role in ensuring integrity and quality in our publications, and we deeply value the commitments and efforts of every reviewer.

Ariel Amir named chief editor of <i>PRX Life</i>

Ariel Amir named chief editor of PRX Life

1 September, 2026

APS is pleased to announce that Ariel Amir has been named the chief editor of PRX Life. His tenure began on Sept. 1, 2026.

<i>PRX Intelligence</I> publishes its first papers

PRX Intelligence publishes its first papers

28 July, 2026

The six new studies present high-quality findings at the intersection of AI, machine learning, and the physical sciences.

American Physical Society releases updated AI policy for APS journals

17 June, 2026

The policy allows authors and reviewers to use AI tools and establishes boundaries to preserve human oversight and accountability.

Collections

More collections

PRX Life Collection on adaptation and learning

PRX Life presents a special collection on ‘Biological systems that learn’, curated by the organizers of the National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology (NITMB) workshop together with early-career researchers. The papers in this collection illustrate how living systems acquire functions, showing it is useful to describe them as tunable matter with many individually adjustable degrees of freedom characterizing microscopic properties. Drawing inspiration from AI and non-biological systems that can acquire desired functions, the featured research highlights the timeliness of the topic and its potential to drive unifying frameworks for emergent collective function in living tunable matter.

Every article in this collection is subject to a rigorous peer review process, upholding the high standards applied to all papers in the journal. The PRX Life editorial team manages peer review and makes all editorial decisions.

Collection on Physics of Biomolecular Condensates

From the fundamentals of phase separation, dynamics and structure of condensates in biological settings, to advanced imaging methods, this special collection presented by PRX Life showcases exciting and timely work on the physics of biomolecular condensates.

This Invited Collection is coordinated by PRX Life Associate Editor Christoph Weber, in consultation with Jerelle Joseph, Simon Alberti, and Tanja Mittag. Every article published in this collection underwent a rigorous peer review process, adhering to the same high standards applied to all papers handled by the journal. The PRX Life editorial team managed the peer review and made all editorial decisions.

Machine Learning and Structural Biology

Curated by the organizers of the Machine Learning for Structural Biology Workshop at NeurIPS, this collection features studies at the intersection of computer science and biology, showcasing how machine learning is impacting our understanding of biological molecules and their processes.

Every article published in this collection underwent a rigorous peer review process, adhering to the same high standards applied to all papers handled by the journal. The PRX Life editorial team managed the peer review and made all editorial decisions.

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