Related papers: Polymorphism in tubulin assemblies: a mechanical m…
By means of sophisticated Monte Carlo methods, we investigate the conformational phase diagram of a simple model for flexible polymers with explicit thickness. The thickness constraint, which is introduced geometrically via the global…
Building structures with hierarchical order through the self-assembly of smaller blocks is not only a prerogative of nature, but also a strategy to design artificial materials with tailored functions. We explore in simulation the…
Spontaneous material shape changes, such as swelling, growth or thermal expansion, can be used to trigger dramatic elastic instabilities in thin shells. These instabilities originate in geometric incompatibility between the preferred…
Take a drinking straw and bend it from its ends. After sufficient bending, the tube buckles forming a kink, where the curvature is localized in a very small area. This instability, known generally as the Brazier effect, is inherent to…
Cell extrusion is an essential mechanism for controlling cell density in epithelial tissues. Another essential element of epithelia is curvature, which is required to achieve complex shapes, like in the lung or intestine. Here we introduce…
We study the phase behavior of ternary amphiphilic systems in the framework of a curvature model with non-vanishing spontaneous curvature. The amphiphilic monolayers can arrange in different ways to form micellar, hexagonal, lamellar and…
We use optical trapping to continuously bend an isolated microtubule while simultaneously measuring the applied force and the resulting filament strain, thus allowing us to determine its elastic properties over a wide range of applied…
Amphiphiles are molecules which have both hydrophilic and hydrophobic parts. In water- and/or oil-like solvent, they self-assemble into extended sheet-like structures due to the hydrophobic effect. The free energy of an amphiphilic system…
Active emulsions and liquid crystalline shells are intriguing and experimentally realisable types of topological matter. Here we numerically study the morphology and spatiotemporal dynamics of a double emulsion, where one or two passive…
We investigate the behavior of a mixture of asymmetric colloidal dumbbells and emulsion droplets by means of kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. The evaporation of the droplets and the competition between droplet-colloid attraction and…
Many biological and synthetic materials self-assemble into helical or twisted aggregates. The shape is determined by a complex interplay between elastic forces and the orientation and chirality of the constituent molecules. We study this…
We develop a class of models with which we simulate the assembly of particles into T1 capsid-like objects using Newtonian dynamics. By simulating assembly for many different values of system parameters, we vary the forces that drive…
Self-assembly materials are traditionally designed so that molecular or meso-scale components form a single kind of large structure. Here, we propose a scheme to create "multifarious assembly mixtures", which self-assemble many different…
Curvature in biological membranes can be generated by a variety of different molecular mechanisms such as protein scaffolding, lipid or protein asymmetry, cytoskeletal forces, etc. These mechanisms have the net effect of generating stresses…
We use computer simulations to study a model, first proposed by Wales [1], for the reversible and monodisperse self-assembly of simple icosahedral virus capsid structures. The success and efficiency of assembly as a function of…
The intermittent transition between slow growth and rapid shrinkage in polymeric assemblies is termed dynamic instability, a feature observed in a variety of biochemically distinct assemblies including microtubules, actin and their…
The topological properties of materials are, until now, associated with the features of their crystalline structure, although translational symmetry is not an explicit requirement of the topological phases. Recent studies of hopping models…
In contrast to extensively studied defects in traditional materials, we report here for the first time a systematic investigation of the formation mechanism of intrinsic defects in self-assembled peptide nanostructures. The Monte Carlo…
Highly symmetric nano-shells are found in many biological systems, such as clathrin cages and viral shells. Several studies have shown that symmetric shells appear in nature as a result of the free energy minimization of a generic…
We study equilibrium shapes and shape transformations of a confined semiflexible chain inside a soft lipid tubule using simulations and continuum theories. The deformed tubular shapes and chain conformations depend on the relative magnitude…