Related papers: Robust nonequilibrium pathways to microcompartment…
In response to natural or anthropocentric pollutions coupled to global climate changes, microorganisms from aquatic environments can suddenly accumulate on water surface. These dense suspensions, known as blooms, are harmful to ecosystems…
The bipolar organization of the microtubule-based mitotic spindle is essential for the faithful segregation of chromosomes in cell division. Despite our extensive knowledge of genes and proteins, the physical mechanism of how the ensemble…
Liquid mixtures of many interacting components often exhibit numerous coexisting types of droplets. An exciting example is the cytosol of biological cells, where diverse droplets, called condensates, are essential for cellular function.…
We show systematically that a steady-state ensemble of mesoscopic inclusions of a solute-rich fluid can emerge in liquid solutions well outside the region of stability of the solute-rich phase. Unanticipated by conventional treatments, this…
Equilibrium self-assembly and conventional materials processing techniques fall far short of mimicking dynamic self-actuating processes that are commonplace throughout biology. To bridge the gap between living and synthetic matter, we study…
Collective behavior of proteins on biomembranes is usually studied within the spontaneous curvature model. Here we consider an alternative phenomenological approach, which accounts consistently for partial ordering of proteins as well as…
Biomolecules composed of a limited set of chemical building blocks can co-localize into distinct, spatially segregated compartments known as biomolecular condensates. While many condensates are known to form spontaneously via phase…
DNA is an ideal candidate to organize matter on the nanoscale, primarily due to the specificity and complexity of DNA based interactions. Recent advances in this direction include the self-assembly of colloidal crystals using DNA grafted…
Self-assembly is a fundamental concept in biology and of significant interest to nanotechnology. Significant progress has been made in characterizing and controlling the properties of the resulting structures, both experimentally and…
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…
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…
The self-assembly of binary nanoparticle superlattices from colloidal mixtures is a promising method for the fabrication of complex colloidal co-crystal structures. However, binary mixtures often form amorphous or metastable phases instead…
The inverse problem of designing component interactions to target emergent structure is fundamental to numerous applications in biotechnology, materials science, and statistical physics. Equally important is the inverse problem of designing…
Liquid shells, such as lipid vesicles and soap bubbles, are ubiquitous throughout biology, engineered matter, and everyday life. Their creation and disintegration are defined by a singularity that separates a topologically distinct extended…
Non-equilibrium cluster-cluster aggregation of particles diffusing in or at the cell membrane has been hypothesized to lead to domains of finite size in different biological contexts such as lipid rafts, cell adhesion complexes, or…
Controlled micro- to meso-scale porosity is a common materials design goal with possible applications ranging from molecular gas adsorption to particle size selective permeability or solubility. Here, we use inverse methods of statistical…
We report the co-assembly and adsorption properties of coacervate complexes made from polyelectrolyte-neutral block copolymers and oppositely charged nanocolloids. The nanocolloids put under scrutiny were ionic surfactant micelles and…
A cell dynamics method for domain separation of diblock copolymers (DBCPs) interacting with nanoparticles (NPs) whose diffusion coefficients depend on chain configuration is proposed for self-assembly of DBCP/NP composites. Increasing NP…
Self-assembly of complex and functional materials remains a grand challenge in soft material science. Efficient assembly depends on a delicate balance between thermodynamic and kinetic effects, requiring fine-tuning affinities and…
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…