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Colloidal particles can self-assemble into various ordered structures in fluid flows that have potential applications in biomedicine, materials synthesis and encryption. These dynamic processes are also of fundamental interest for probing…
Flexibility governs the many properties of materials and is crucial for the function of proteins and biopolymers. However, how the self-assembly of flexibly bonded particles can lead to larger structures with global reconfigurability is…
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…
The structure of DNA Binding Proteins enables a strong interaction with their specific target site on DNA. However, recent single molecule experiment reported that proteins can diffuse on DNA. This suggests that the interactions between…
DNA-interacting proteins have roles multiple processes, many operating as molecular machines which undergo dynamic metastable transitions to bring about their biological function. To fully understand this molecular heterogeneity, DNA and…
We use simple analytic arguments and lattice-based computer simulations to study the growth of structures made from a large number of distinct component types. Components possess 'designed' interactions, chosen to stabilize an equilibrium…
Fluorescence microscopy reveals that the contents of many (membrane-free) nuclear "bodies" exchange rapidly with the soluble pool whilst the underlying structure persists; such observations await a satisfactory biophysical explanation. To…
The spatio-temporal organization of proteins and the associated morphological changes in membranes are of importance in cell signaling. Several mechanisms that promote the aggregation of proteins at low cell surface concentrations have been…
DNA-mediated computing is a novel technology that seeks to capitalize on the enormous informational capacity of DNA and has tremendous computational ability to compete with the current silicon-mediated computing, due to massive parallelism…
Nanoparticles tethered with DNA strands are promising building blocks for bottom-up nanotechnology, and a theoretical understanding is important for future development. Here we build on approaches developed in polymer physics to provide…
Multivalent particles have the ability to form multiple bonds to a substrate. Hence, a multivalent interaction can be strong, even if the individual bonds are weak. However, much more interestingly, multivalency greatly increases the…
Unlike biological active matter that constantly adapt to their environment, the motors of synthetic active particles are typically agnostic to their surroundings and merely operate at constant force. Here, we design colloidal active rods…
Molecular electronics and other technologies whose components comprise individual molecules have been pursued for half a century because the molecular scale represents the limit of miniaturisation of objects whose structure is tuneable for…
Stimulus-responsive DNA-hydrogels with swelling capabilities are a promising class of materials for biomedical applications such as drug delivery and biosensing. However, translation of these systems to microscale applications requires…
We show that the interaction of an oil-dispersed colloidal particle with an oil-water interface is highly tunable from attractive to repulsive, either by varying the sign of the colloidal charge via charge regulation, or by varying the…
There is increasing evidence that protein binding to specific sites along DNA can activate the reading out of genetic information without coming into direct physical contact with the gene. There also is evidence that these distant but…
The mechanical model based on beads and springs, which we recently proposed to study non-specific DNA-protein interactions [J. Chem. Phys. 130, 015103 (2009)], was improved by describing proteins as sets of interconnected beads instead of…
Biological cells self-organize into living materials that uniquely blend structure with functionality and responsiveness to the environment. The integration of similar life-like features in man-made materials remains challenging, yet…
We present a theoretical discussion of a self-assembly scheme which makes it possible to use DNA to uniquely encode the composition and structure of micro- and nanoparticle clusters. These anisotropic DNA-decorated clusters can be further…
Recent advancements in microbiology have motivated the study of the production of nanostructures with applications such as biomedical computing and molecular robotics. One way to construct these structures is to construct branched DNA…