Related papers: Self-assembly of protein amyloid: a competition be…
We use computer simulations to investigate self-assembly in a system of model chaperonin proteins, and in an Ising lattice gas. We discuss the mechanisms responsible for rapid and efficient assembly in these systems, and we use measurements…
Nucleation processes are at the heart of a large number of phenomena, from cloud formation to protein crystallization. A recently emerging area where nucleation is highly relevant is the initiation of filamentous protein self-assembly, a…
We study the self-assembly of branching-chain networks and crystals in a binary colloidal system with tunable interactions. The particle positions are extracted from microscope images and order parameters are extracted by image processing…
Protein folding produces characteristic and functional three-dimensional structures from unfolded polypeptides or disordered coils. The emergence of extraordinary complexity in the protein folding process poses astonishing challenges to…
We study the compression of bundles of aligned macroscopic fibers with intrinsic shape disorder, as found in human hair and in many other natural and man-made systems. We show by a combination of experiments, numerical simulations and…
The rapid progress in precisely designing the surface decoration of patchy colloidal particles offers a new, yet unexperienced freedom to create building entities for larger, more complex structures in soft matter systems. However, it is…
Self-assembly of polypeptides into fibrillar structures can be initiated by planar surfaces that interact favorably with certain residues. Using a coarse grained model, we systematically studied the folding and adsorption behavior of a…
Self-assembly in natural and synthetic molecular systems can create complex aggregates or materials whose properties and functionality rises from their internal structure and molecular arrangement. The key microscopic features that control…
Living cells dynamically modulate the local morphologies of their actin cytoskeletons to perform biological functions, including force transduction, intracellular transport, and cell division. A major challenge is to understand how diverse…
Protein assembly plays an important role in the regulation of biological systems. The cytoskeleton assembly activity is provided by the binding cofactors GTP (guanidine triphosphate) or ATP(adenosine triphosphate) to monomeric protein, and…
A phenomenological description for active bundles of polar filaments is presented. The activity of the bundle results from crosslinks, that induce relative displacements between the aligned filaments. Our generic description is based on…
A generalized theory of the self-limiting assembly of twisted bundles of filaments and columns is presented. Bundles and fibers form in a broad variety of supramolecular systems, from biological to synthetic materials. A widely-invoked…
In the present work, with the intent of exploring the out-of-equilibrium polymerization of active patchy particles in linear chains, we study a suspension of active bivalent Brownian particles (ABBPs). At all studied temperatures and…
Preliminary results are presented for the kinetics of phase separation in three distinct models of protein aggregation. The first is a model of the formation of spherical microcrystals of insulin via an initial formation of fractal clusters…
We describe a computational model for studying the complexity of self-assembled structures with active molecular components. Our model captures notions of growth and movement ubiquitous in biological systems. The model is inspired by…
Understanding how highly symmetric, robust, monodisperse protein cages self-assemble can have major applications in various areas of bio-nanotechnology, such as drug delivery, biomedical imaging and gene therapy. We develop a model to…
By means of multicanonical computer simulations, we investigate thermodynamic properties of the aggregation of interacting semiflexible polymers. We analyze a mesoscopic bead-stick model, where nonbonded monomers interact via Lennard-Jones…
We present a statistical mechanics approach to the protein folding problem. We first review some of the basic properties of proteins, and introduce some physical models to describe their thermodynamics. These models rely on a random…
The assembly of filamentous bundles with controlled diameters is common in biological systems and desirable for the development of nanomaterials. We discuss dynamical simulations and free energy calculations on patchy spheres with chiral…
Classification of proteins based on their structure provides a valuable resource for studying protein structure, function and evolutionary relationships. With the rapidly increasing number of known protein structures, manual and…