Related papers: Allosteric control in icosahedral capsid assembly
Interactions between a protein and a ligand are often accompanied by a redistribution of the population of thermally accessible conformations. This dynamic response of the protein's functional energy landscape enables a protein to modulate…
Self-assembly processes are widespread in nature, and lie at the heart of many biological and physical phenomena. The characteristics of self-assembly building blocks determine the structures that they form. Two crucial properties are the…
Crystallization of proteins, specifically proteins of medical relevance, is performed for various reasons such as to understand the protein structure and to design therapies. Obtaining kinetic constants in rate laws for nucleation and…
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…
We assemble charged colloidal spheres at deliberately chosen locations on a charged unstructured glass substrate utilizing ion exchange based electro-osmotic micro-pumps. Using microscopy, a simple scaling theory and Brownian Dynamics…
We investigate the phase behaviour of mixtures of two populations of colloidal particles dispersed in a binary solvent system near its critical composition. The surfaces of particles are chemically modified to elicit a specific solvent…
Entropic self-assembly is governed by the shape of the constituent particles, yet a priori prediction of crystal structures from particle shape alone is non-trivial for anything but the simplest of space-filling shapes. At the same time,…
One of the challenges of self-assembling finite-sized colloidal aggregates with a sought morphology is the necessity of precisely sorting the position of the colloids at the microscopic scale to avoid the formation of off-target structures.…
Viruses self-assemble from identical capsid proteins and their genome consisting, for example, of a long single stranded (ss) RNA. For a big class of T = 3 viruses capsid proteins have long positive N-terminal tails. We explore the role…
The effects of confinement on colloidal self-assembly in the case of fixed number of confined particles are studied in the one dimensional lattice model solved exactly in the Grand Canonical Ensemble (GCE) in [J. P\k{e}kalski et al. J.…
Allostery is a fundamental mechanism of protein regulation and is commonly interpreted as modulating enzymatic activity or product abundance. Here we show that this view is incomplete. Using a stochastic model of allosteric regulation…
Protein functions in cells may be activated or modified by the attachment of several kinds of chemical groups. While protein phosphorylation, i.e. the attachment of a phosphoryl (PO$_3^-$) group, is the most studied form of protein…
Entropy alone can self-assemble hard particles into colloidal crystals of remarkable complexity whose structures are the same as atomic and molecular crystals, but with larger lattice spacings. Although particle-based molecular simulation…
We simulate crystallisation of hard spheres with short-ranged attractive potentials, as a model self-assembling system. We show how measurements of correlation and response functions during assembly can be used to tune the interaction…
Robust self-organization of subcellular structures is a key principle governing the dynamics and evolution of cellular life. In fission yeast cells undergoing division, the mitotic spindle spontaneously emerges from the interaction of…
The self assembly of core-corona discs interacting via anisotropic potentials is investigated using Monte Carlo computer simulations. A minimal interaction potential that incorporates anisotropy in a simple way is introduced. It consists in…
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…
Understanding interactions between microparticles and lipid membranes is of increasing importance, especially for unraveling the influence of microplastics on our health and environment. Here, we study how a short-ranged adhesive force…
Colloidal particles can spontaneously self-assemble into ordered structures, which not only can manipulate the propagation of light, but also vibration or phonons. Using Monte Carlo simulation, we study the self-assembly of perfectly…
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…