Related papers: A DNA-encoded recipe to direct multi-stage colloid…
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…
Both biological and artificial self-assembly processes can take place by a range of different schemes, from the successive addition of identical building blocks, to hierarchical sequences of intermediates, all the way to the fully…
While colloids are promising building blocks for the self-assembly of materials with novel microstructures, their numerous tunable parameters inhibit brute force searching for appropriate parameter combinations that yield self-assembly of a…
Multi-step pathways, constituted of a sequence of reconfigurations, are central to a wide variety of natural and man-made systems. Such pathways autonomously execute in self-guided processes such as protein folding and self-assembly, but…
Biomolecular motor proteins that generate forces by consuming chemical energy obtained from ATP hydrolysis are pivotal for organizing broad cytoskeletal structures in living cells. The control of such cytoskeletal structures benefits…
We investigate general properties of non-deterministic self-assembly with asymmetric interactions, using a computational model and DNA tile assembly experiments. By contrasting symmetric and asymmetric interactions we show that the latter…
A challenge of molecular self-assembly is to understand how to design particles that self-assemble into a desired structure and not any of a potentially large number of undesired structures. Here we use simulation to show that a strategy of…
The packaging of genetic material within a protein shell, called the capsid, marks a pivotal step in the life cycle of numerous single-stranded RNA viruses. Understanding how hundreds, or even thousands, of proteins assemble around the…
Colloidal particles are considered ideal building blocks to produce materials with enhanced physical properties. The state-of-the-art techniques for synthesizing these particles provide control over shape, size, and directionality of the…
We perform off-lattice, canonical ensemble molecular dynamics simulations of the self-assembly of long segmented copolymers consisting of alternating, tunably attractive and hydrophobic {\em binder} domains, connected by hydrophilic {\em…
Colloidal molecules are ideal model systems for mimicking real molecules and can serve as versatile building blocks for the bottom-up self-assembly of flexible and smart materials. While most colloidal molecules are rigid objects, the…
Geometric frustration offers a pathway to soft matter self-assembly with controllable finite sizes. While the understanding of frustration in soft matter assembly derives almost exclusively from continuum elastic descriptions, a current…
We propose that genetic encoding of self-assembling components greatly enhances the evolution of complex systems and provides an efficient platform for inductive generalization, i.e. the inductive derivation of a solution to a problem with…
We survey our research on modeling the mechanisms of control of uniformity in growth of nanosize and colloid particles. The former are produced as nanocrystals, by burst-nucleation from solution. The latter, colloid-size particles, are…
Directed atomic fabrication using an aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) opens new pathways for atomic engineering of functional materials. In this approach, the electron beam is used to actively alter the…
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…
During the lifecycle of many single-stranded RNA viruses, including many human pathogens, a protein shell called the capsid spontaneously assembles around the viral genome. Understanding the mechanisms by which capsid proteins selectively…
Found in all eukaryotic cells, linker histones H1 are known to bind to and rearrange nucleosomal linker DNA. In vitro, the fundamental nature of H1/DNA interactions has attracted wide interest among research communities - for biologists…
The Watson-Crick complementary properties of DNA make DNA a useful tool for the self-assembly of various target complexes. Concepts from graph theory can be used to model the self-assembling process in which the vertices of the graph…
We study the self-assembly behaviour of patchy particles with `protein-like' interactions that can be considered as a minimal model for the assembly of viral capsids and other shell-like protein complexes. We thoroughly explore the…