Related papers: Competition between monomeric and dimeric crystals…
We present a kinetic model of crystal growth of polymers of finite molecular weight. Experiments help to classify polymer crystallization broadly into two kinetic regimes. One is observed in melts or in high molar mass polymer solutions and…
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…
Protein crystallization in vivo provides some fascinating examples of biological self-assembly. Here, we provide a selective survey to show the diversity of functions for which protein crystals are used, and the physical properties of the…
We use computer simulation to study crystal-forming model proteins equipped with interactions that are both orientationally specific and nonspecific. Distinct dynamical pathways of crystal formation can be selected by tuning the strengths…
We use numerical simulations to study the crystallization of monodisperse systems of hard aspherical particles. We find that particle shape and crystallizability can be easily related to each other when particles are characterized in terms…
The dilute fluid phase of model globular proteins is studied. The model possesses a fluid-fluid transition buried within the fluid-crystal coexistence region, as do some globular proteins. If this fluid-fluid transition is not buried deep…
In view of the notorious complexity of protein--protein interactions, simplified models of proteins treated as patchy particles offer a promising strategy to obtain insight into the mechanism of crystallization. Here we report…
Motivated by the idea that intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) condense into liquid-like droplets within cells, we carry out Monte Carlo simulations of a polymer lattice model to study the relationship between charge patterning and…
We study a two-dimensional model for interacting colloidal particles which displays spontaneous clustering. Within this model we investigate the competition between the pinning to a periodic corrugation potential, and a sideways constant…
Motion of protein drops on crystallization media during routine handling is a major factor affecting the reproducibility of crystallization conditions. Drop stability can be enhanced by chemical patterning to more effectively pin the drop's…
We performed dynamic simulations of spheres with short-range attractive interactions for many values of interaction strength and range. Fast crystallization occurs in a localized region of this parameter space, but the character of…
We study numerically the crystallization of a hard-sphere mixture with 8\% polydispersity. Although often used as a model glass former, for small system sizes we observe crystallization in molecular dynamics simulations. This opens the…
We discuss a realistic scenario, accounting for the existence of sub-micrometric protein domains in cell membranes. At the biological level, such membrane domains have been shown to be specialized, in order to perform a determined…
We report theoretical and simulation studies of phase coexistence in model globular protein solutions, based on short-range, central, pair potential representations of the interaction among macro-particles. After reviewing our previous…
Usually, we expect large particles to sediment faster than small of the same material. Contrary to this intuition, we report a dynamical competition between sedimentation and phase ordering which leads to smaller particles settling faster…
It has recently been shown that identical, isotropic particles can form complex crystals and quasicrystals. In order to understand the relation between the particle interaction and the structure, which it stabilizes, the phase behavior of a…
Unlike atoms, colloidal particles are not identical, but can only be synthesised within a finite size tolerance. Colloids are therefore polydisperse, i.e. mixtures of infinitely many components with sizes drawn from a continuous…
Biomolecular condensates play essential roles in cellular processes, and recent efforts have focused on understanding their assembly and rational design principles. In this study, we have employed an explicit-solvent minimal statistical…
X-ray crystallography is the predominant method for obtaining atomic-scale information about biological macromolecules. Despite the success of the technique, obtaining well diffracting crystals still critically limits going from protein to…
Complex crystal structures are composed of multiple local environments, and how this type of order emerges spontaneously during crystal growth has yet to be fully understood. We study crystal growth across various structures and along…