Related papers: Modeling capsid self-assembly: Design and analysis
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…
The simplest prescription for building a patterned structure from its constituents is to add particles, one at a time, to an appropriate template. However, self-organizing molecular and colloidal systems in nature can evolve in much more…
We study a phenomenological model in which the simulated packing of hard, attractive spheres on a prolate spheroid surface with convexity constraints produces structures identical to those of prolate virus capsid structures. Our simulation…
We use computer simulation to investigate the self-assembly of Janus-like amphiphilic peanut-shaped nanoparticles, finding phases of clusters, bilayers and micelles in accord with ideas of packing familiar from the study of molecular…
Highly symmetric nano-shells are found in many biological systems, such as clathrin cages and viral shells. Several studies have shown that symmetric shells appear in nature as a result of the free energy minimization of a generic…
Self-assembly is a phenomenon observed in nature at all scales where autonomous entities build complex structures, without external influences nor centralised master plan. Modelling such entities and programming correct interactions among…
Multilevel self-assembly involving small structured groups of nano-particles provides new routes to development of functional materials with a sophisticated architecture. Apart from the inter-particle forces, the geometrical shapes and…
Recent studies reveal that certain viruses package a portion of their genome in a manner that mirrors the icosahedral symmetry of the protein container, or capsid. Graph theoretical constraints forbid exact realization of icosahedral…
Many viruses rely on the self-assembly of their capsids to protect and transport their genomic material. For many viral systems, in particular for human viruses like hepatitis B, adeno or human immunodeficiency virus, that lead to…
The molecular self-assembly of various structures such as micelles and vesicles has been the subject of comprehensive studies. Recently, a new approach to design these structures, the frame-guided assembly, has been developed to progress…
We present a coarse-grained model of clathrin that is simple enough to be computationally tractable yet includes key observed qualitative features: a triskelion structure with excluded volume between legs; assembly of polymorphic cages in…
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…
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…
Patchy particles have proven to be a prominent model for studying the self-assembly behavior of various systems, ranging from finite clusters to bulk crystal assemblies, and from synthetic colloidal particles to viruses. The patchy particle…
Colloidal molecules are designed to mimic their molecular analogues through their anisotropic shape and interactions. However, current experimental realizations are missing the structural flexibility present in real molecules thereby…
We explore the use of templated self-assembly to facilitate the formation of complex target structures made from patchy particles. First, we consider the templating of high-symmetry shell structures around a spherical core particle. We find…
Biomolecular condensates self-assemble when proteins and nucleic acids spontaneously demix to form droplets within the crowded intracellular milieu. This simple mechanism underlies the formation of a wide variety of membraneless…
In living cells, proteins self-assemble into large functional structures based on specific interactions between molecularly complex patches. Due to this complexity, protein self-assembly results from a competition between a large number of…
Single-stranded (ss) RNA viruses self-assemble spontaneously in solutions that contain the viral RNA genome molecules and viral capsid proteins. The self-assembly of empty capsids can be understood on the basis of free energy minimization.…
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…