Related papers: Self-assembly, modularity and physical complexity
The connection between self-assembly and computation suggests that a shape can be considered the output of a self-assembly ``program,'' a set of tiles that fit together to create a shape. It seems plausible that the size of the smallest…
Self-assembly is a ubiquitous process in synthetic and biological systems, broadly defined as the spontaneous organization of multiple subunits (e.g. macromolecules, particles) into ordered multi-unit structures. The vast majority of…
Cellular functions are established through biological evolution, but are constrained by the laws of physics. For instance, the physics of protein folding limits the lengths of cellular polypeptide chains. Consequently, many cellular…
Building structures with hierarchical order through the self-assembly of smaller blocks is not only a prerogative of nature, but also a strategy to design artificial materials with tailored functions. We explore in simulation the…
One thing that discriminates living things from inanimate matter is their ability to generate similarly complex or non-random architectures in a large abundance. From DNA sequences to folded protein structures, living cells, microbial…
We study correlation measures for complex systems. First, we investigate some recently proposed measures based on information geometry. We show that these measures can increase under local transformations as well as under discarding…
Spontaneous self-assembly in molecular systems is a fundamental route to both biological and engineered soft matter. Simple micellisation, emulsion formation, and polymer mixing principles are well understood. However, the principles behind…
We show that modularity, a quantity introduced in the study of networked systems, can be generalized and used in the clustering problem as an indicator for the quality of the solution. The introduction of this measure arises very naturally…
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…
We aim at studying collections of algebraic structures defined over a commutative ring and investigating the complexity of significant constructions carried out on these objects. The assignment of measures of size, via a multiplicity…
In the self-assembly process which drives the formation of cellular membranes, micelles, and capsids, a collection of separated subunits spontaneously binds together to form functional and more ordered structures. In this work, we study the…
Molecular assembly offers a promising path to detect life beyond Earth, while minimizing assumptions based on terrestrial life. As mass spectrometers will be central to upcoming Solar System missions, predicting molecular assembly from…
The field of complex self-assembly is moving toward the design of multi-particle structures consisting of thousands of distinct building blocks. To exploit the potential benefits of structures with such `addressable complexity,' we need to…
The self-assembly of particles into organized structures is a key feature of living organisms and a major engineering challenge. While it may proceed through the binding of perfectly matched, puzzle-pieces-like particles, many other…
Quantum many-body systems exhibit a rich and diverse range of exotic behaviours, owing to their underlying non-classical structure. These systems present a deep structure beyond those that can be captured by measures of correlation and…
Although tissues are usually studied in isolation, this situation rarely occurs in biology, as cells, tissues, and organs, coexist and interact across scales to determine both shape and function. Here, we take a quantitative approach…
Given the importance of urban sustainability and resilience to the future of our planet, there is a need to better understand the interconnectedness between the social, economic, environmental, and governance outcomes that underline these…
In previous work, we introduced a method for modeling a configuration of objects in 2D and 3D images using a mathematical "medial/skeletal linking structure." In this paper, we show how these structures allow us to capture positional…
This work introduces a complexity measure which addresses some conflicting issues between existing ones by using a new principle - measuring the average amount of symmetry broken by an object. It attributes low (although different)…
Many random combinatorial objects have a component structure whose joint distribution is equal to that of a process of mutually independent random variables, conditioned on the value of a weighted sum of the variables. It is interesting to…