Related papers: Examples of molecular self-assembly at surfaces

Membrane tubulation is a ubiquitous process that occurs both at the plasma membrane and on the membranes of intracellular organelles. These tubulation events are known to be mediated by forces applied on the membrane either due to motor…

Cholesteric liquid crystals can exhibit spatial patterns in molecular alignment at interfaces that can be exploited for particle assembly. These patterns emerge from the competition between bulk and surface energies, tunable with the system…

A crystal lattice, when confined to the surface of a cylinder, must have a periodic structure that is commensurate with the cylinder circumference. This constraint can frustrate the system, leading to oblique crystal lattices or to…

Cells attach to their environment by means of focal adhesions, which are molecular complexes that exhibit the remarkable ability to adapt to mechanical load by changing their size. Drawing from the biomolecular mechanisms underlying this…

Capillarity-driven self-assembly at fluidic interfaces offers a scalable route to large, reconfigurable materials. Microscale particles with high horizontal-to-vertical aspect ratios become attractive building blocks for shape-directed…

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…

We propose a computationally lean, two-stage approach that reliably predicts self-assembly behavior of complex charged molecules on a metallic surfaces under electrochemical conditions. Stage one uses ab initio simulations to provide…

Many biological materials must couple mechanical strength with the ability to rapidly self-assemble at a specific location. In particular, biomolecular condensates readily self-assemble via phase separation, but may also need to resist…

We study the behaviour of interacting self-propelled particles, whose self-propulsion speed decreases with their local density. By combining direct simulations of the microscopic model with an analysis of the hydrodynamic equations obtained…

Lipid membranes form the barrier between the inside and outside of cells and many of their subcompartments. As such, they bind to a wide variety of nano- and micrometer sized objects and, in the presence of strong adhesive forces, strongly…

Spatial organisation is a hallmark of all living cells, and recreating it in model systems is a necessary step in the creation of synthetic cells. It is therefore of both fundamental and practical interest to better understand the basic…

Active emulsions can spontaneously form self-propelled droplets or phoretic micropumps. It has been predicted that the interaction with their self-generated chemical fields can lead to multistable higher-order flows and chemodynamic…

Using an adiabatic approximation method, which searches for Tomlinson model-like instabilities for a simple but still realistic model for two crystalline surfaces in the extremely light contact limit, with mobile molecules present at the…

Peptides are ubiquitous and important biologically derived molecules, that have been found to self-assemble to form a wide array of structures. Extensive research has explored the impacts of both internal chemical composition and external…

Single-molecule pulling techniques have emerged as versatile tools for probing the noncovalent forces holding together the secondary and tertiary structure of macromolecules. They also constitute a way to study at the single-molecule level…

We report on self-assemblies formed from spherical patchy particles interacting by a long-range attraction through a patch region in a two-dimensional system. We performed Monte Carlo simulations to find stable structures in a system with…

In self-assembly processes, kinetic trapping effects often hinder the formation of thermodynamically stable ordered states. In a model of viral capsid assembly and in the phase transformation of a lattice gas, we show how simulations in a…

Self-propulsion and navigation due to the sensing of environmental conditions - such as durotaxis and chemotaxis - are remarkable properties of biological cells that cannot be reproduced by single-component self-propelled particles. We…

The spontaneous generation of electrical activity underpins a number of essential physiological processes, and is observed even in tissues where specialized pacemaker cells have not been identified. The emergence of periodic oscillations in…

The biomolecules in and around a living cell -- proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, carbohydrates -- continuously sample myriad conformational states that are thermally accessible at physiological temperatures. Simultaneously, a given…