Related papers: Role of electrostatic interactions in the assembly…
Electrostatic interactions play a central role in the assembly of single-stranded RNA viruses. Under physiological conditions of salinity and acidity, virus capsid assembly requires the presence of genomic material that is oppositely…
We develop coarse-grained models that describe the dynamic encapsidation of functionalized nanoparticles by viral capsid proteins. We find that some forms of cooperative interactions between protein subunits and nanoparticles can…
Electrostatic interaction is the driving force for the encapsulation by virus coat proteins of nanoparticles such as quantum dots, gold particles and magnetic beads for, e.g., imaging and therapeutic purposes. In recent experimental work,…
While almost any kind of face mask offers some protection against particles and pathogens of different sizes, the most efficient ones make use of a layered structure where one or more layers are electrically charged. This electret layer is…
Electrostatics plays a key role in biomolecular assembly. Oppositely charged biomolecules, for instance, can co-assembled into functional units, such as DNA and histone proteins into nucleosomes and actin-binding protein complexes into…
At low temperatures the interactions between like-oriented steps on a surface are believed to be dominated by elastic repulsions. This belief is based on the results of the classical continuum field theories of elasticity. Electrostatic…
Charged colloidal particles trapped at an air--water interface are well known to form an ordered crystal, stabilized by a long ranged repulsion, the details of this repulsion remain something of a mystery, but all experiments performed to…
We develop equilibrium and kinetic theories that describe the assembly of viral capsid proteins on a charged central core, as seen in recent experiments in which brome mosaic virus (BMV) capsids assemble around nanoparticles functionalized…
The protein shells, or capsids, of all sphere-like viruses adopt icosahedral symmetry. In the present paper we propose a statistical thermodynamic model for viral self-assembly. We find that icosahedral symmetry is not expected for viral…
The electrostatic interaction between pairs of spherical or macroscopically long, parallel cylindrical colloids trapped at fluid interfaces is studied theoretically for the case of small inter-particle separations. Starting from the…
We develop a clear theoretical description of radial swelling in virus-like particles which delineates the importance of electrostatic contributions to swelling in absence of any conformational changes. The model couples the elastic…
We investigate the thermodynamics of complexation of functionalized charged nano-spheres with viral proteins. The physics of this problem is governed by electrostatic interaction between the proteins and the nano-sphere cores (screened by…
Understanding how virus capsids assemble around their nucleic acid (NA) genomes could promote efforts to block viral propagation or to reengineer capsids for gene therapy applications. We develop a coarse-grained model of capsid proteins…
We study the self-assembly behaviour of patchy particles with `protein-like' interactions that can be considered as a minimal model for the assembly of viral capsids and other shell-like protein complexes. We thoroughly explore the…
During the lifecycle of a virus, viral proteins and other components self-assemble to form a symmetric protein shell called a capsid. This assembly process is subject to multiple competing constraints, including the need to form a…
Single-stranded RNA viruses efficiently encapsulate their genome into a protein shell called the capsid. Electrostatic interactions between the positive charges in the capsid protein's N-terminal tail and the negatively charged genome have…
We study the effective electrostatic interactions between a pair of charged colloidal particles without salt ions while the system is confined in two dimensions. In particular we use a simplified model to elucidate the effects of rotational…
Viruses self-assemble from identical capsid proteins and their genome consisting, for example, of a long single stranded (ss) RNA. For a big class of T = 3 viruses capsid proteins have long positive N-terminal tails. We explore the role…
The electrostatic interaction between colloidal particles trapped at the interface between two immiscible electrolyte solutions is studied in the limit of small inter-particle distances. Within an appropriate model exact analytic…
We study the interaction of small hydrophobic particles on the surface of an ultra-soft elastic gel, in which a small amount of elasticity of the medium balances the weights of the particles. The excess energy of the surface of the deformed…