Related papers: Controlling Viral Capsid Assembly with Templating
In recent years the functionality of synthetic active microparticles has edged even closer to that of their biological counterparts. However, we still lack the understanding needed to recreate at the microscale key features of autonomous…
Entangled states are ubiquitous amongst fibrous materials, whether naturally occurring (keratin, collagen, DNA) or synthetic (nanotube assemblies, elastane). A key mechanical characteristic of these systems is their ability to reorganise in…
One of the challenges of self-assembling finite-sized colloidal aggregates with a sought morphology is the necessity of precisely sorting the position of the colloids at the microscopic scale to avoid the formation of off-target structures.…
The characterization of protein-nanoparticle assemblies in solution remains a challenge. We demonstrate a technique based on a graphene microelectrode for structural-functional analysis of model systems composed of nanoparticles enclosed in…
Fractionation is necessary for self-assembly in multicomponent mixtures. Here, reversible fractionation and crystallization are realized and studied in a two-dimensional binary colloids which is supersaturated by enhancing the attraction…
We report that protein confinement within nanoscopic vesicular compartments corresponds to a liquid-liquid phase transition with the protein/water within vesicle lumen interacting very differently than in bulk. We show this effect leads to…
Nearly thirty years after its inception, the field of DNA-programmed colloidal self-assembly has begun to realize its initial promise. In this review, we summarize recent developments in designing effective interactions and understanding…
We demonstrate a novel route of spatially organizing the colloid arrangements on the polymer-grafted substrate by use of self-consistent field and density functional theories. We find that grafting of polymers onto a substrate can…
We characterize the self-assembly of colloidal particles with surface mobile DNA linkers under kinetically limited valence conditions. For this, we put forward a computer simulation model that captures quantitatively the interplay between…
Engineered nanoparticles made from noble metals, rare-earth oxides or semiconductors are emerging as the central constituents of future nanotech developments. In this review, a survey of the complexing strategies between nanoparticles and…
Self-assembly of colloidal particles is poised to become a powerful composite material fabrication technique, but remains challenged by a limited control over the ensuing structures. We develop a new breed of nematic colloids that are…
The native conformation of structured proteins is stabilized by a complex network of interactions. We analyzed the elementary patterns that constitute such network and ranked them according to their importance in shaping protein sequence…
Limited bonding valence, usually accompanied by well-defined directional interactions and selective bonding mechanisms, is nowadays considered among the key ingredients to create complex structures with tailored properties: even though…
The folding of a polypeptide is an example of the cooperative effects of the amino-acid residues. Of recent interest is how a secondary structure, such as a helix, spontaneously forms during the collapse of a peptide from an initial…
Making use of a simplified model for protein folding, it can be shown that conformations which are particularly stable when their energy is minimized with respect to amino acid sequence (in the sense that they display a large energy gap to…
Self-assembly is a vital part of the life cycle of certain icosahedral RNA viruses. Furthermore, the assembly process can be harnessed to make icosahedral virus-like particles (VLPs) from coat protein and RNA in vitro. Although much…
At low temperatures, colloidal particles with short-range attractive and long-range repulsive interactions can form various periodic microphases in bulk.In this paper, we investigate the self-assembly behaviour of colloids with competing…
Nano-particle agglomeration plays an important role in processes such as spray drying and particle flame synthesis. These processes have in common that nano-particles collide at low concentrations and get irreversibly linked at the point of…
We present a top-down approach to the study of the dynamics of icosahedral virus capsids, in which each protein is approximated by a point mass. Although this represents a rather crude coarse-graining, we argue that it highlights several…
Molecular dynamics simulation is used to model the self-assembly of polyhedral shells containing 180 trapezoidal particles that correspond to the T=3 virus capsid. Three kinds of particle, differing only slightly in shape, are used to…