Related papers: Perspective: Geometrically-Frustrated Assemblies
Making use of a simplified model for protein folding, it can be shown that conformations which are particularly stable when their energy is minimized with respect to amino acid sequence (in the sense that they display a large energy gap to…
Frustration in the presence of competing interactions is ubiquitous in the physical sciences and is a source of degeneracy and disorder, giving rise to new and interesting physical phenomena. Perhaps nowhere does it occur more simply than…
Polypeptides can self-assemble into hierarchically organized fibrils consisting of a stack of individually folded polypeptides driven together by hydrophobic interaction. Using a coarse grained model, we systematically studied this…
We study two mechanisms for the formation of protein patterns near membranes of living cells by mathematical modelling. Self-assembly of protein domains by electrostatic lipid-protein interactions is contrasted with self-organization due to…
Large protein complexes are assembled from protein subunits to form a specific structure. In our theoretic work, we propose that assembly into the correct structure could be reliably achieved through an assembly line with a specific…
Spontaneous mechanical self-assembly of monodisperse bubbles generally leads to disordered foams at low density: producing crystalline structures such as Kelvin foams has proven to be challenging experimentally, despite them being a minimum…
In this perspective article, we discuss the challenges of imaging assemblies of particles in three dimensions. Starting from a brief motivation for the investigation of particulate materials, we provide an overview of experimental…
We perform numerical simulations to study self-assembly of nanoparticles mediated by an elastic planar surface. We show how the nontrivial elastic response to deformations of these surfaces leads to anisotropic interactions between the…
Self-assembly processes provide the means to achieve scalable and versatile metamaterials by "bottom-up" fabrication. Despite their enormous potential, especially as a platform for energy materials, self-assembled metamaterials are often…
The simulated self-assembly of molecular building blocks into functional complexes is a key area of study in computational biology and materials science. Self-assembly simulations of proteins using physically-motivated potentials for…
Packing problems have been a source of fascination for millenia and their study has produced a rich literature that spans numerous disciplines. Investigations of hard-particle packing models have provided basic insights into the structure…
We investigate with experiments and novel mapping the structure of a hexagonally ordered filament bundle that is held near its ends and progressively twisted around its central axis. The filaments are free to slide relative to each other…
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 use numerical simulations to show how noninteracting hard particles binding to a deformable elastic shell may self-assemble into a variety of linear patterns. This is a result of the nontrivial elastic response to deformations of shells.…
The isothermal, isobaric spontaneous crystallization of a supercooled polymer melt is investigated by MD simulation of an ensemble of fully-flexible linear chains. Frustration is introduced via two incommensurate length scales set by the…
Structural hierarchy, in which materials possess distinct features on multiple length scales, is ubiquitous in nature; diverse biological materials, such as bone, cellulose, and muscle, have as many as ten hierarchical levels. Structural…
For two decades now, the importance of microstructure in the mechanical behaviour of a large collection of grains has been a topic of intense research. Many approaches have been developed to study the microstructure in granular materials,…
We apply a simple model system of patchy particles to study monodisperse self-assembly, using the Platonic solids as target structures. We find marked differences between the assembly behaviours of the different systems. Tetrahedra,…
Many native structures of proteins accomodate complex topological motifs such as knots, lassos, and other geometrical entanglements. How proteins can fold quickly even in the presence of such topological obstacles is a debated question in…
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…