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Protein aggregation is of great importance in biology, e.g., in amyloid fibrillation. The aggregation processes that occur at the cellular scale must be highly stochastic in nature because of the statistical number fluctuations that arise…
Self-assembly in natural and synthetic molecular systems can create complex aggregates or materials whose properties and functionality rises from their internal structure and molecular arrangement. The key microscopic features that control…
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…
Spontaneous self-assembly in molecular systems is a fundamental route to both biological and engineered soft matter. Simple micellisation, emulsion formation, and polymer mixing principles are well understood. However, the principles behind…
Protein assembly plays an important role in the regulation of biological systems. The cytoskeleton assembly activity is provided by the binding cofactors GTP (guanidine triphosphate) or ATP(adenosine triphosphate) to monomeric protein, and…
Cellular functions are established through biological evolution, but are constrained by the laws of physics. For instance, the physics of protein folding limits the lengths of cellular polypeptide chains. Consequently, many cellular…
The design space for a self-assembled multicomponent objects ranges from a solution in which every building block is unique to one with the minimum number of distinct building blocks that unambiguously define the target structure. Using a…
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…
We describe some of the important physical characteristics of the `pathways', i.e. dynamical processes, by which molecular, nanoscale and micron-scale self-assembly occurs. We highlight the fact that there exist features of self-assembly…
In the self-assembly process which drives the formation of cellular membranes, micelles, and capsids, a collection of separated subunits spontaneously binds together to form functional and more ordered structures. In this work, we study the…
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…
Cytoskeletal filaments are capable of self-assembly in the absence of externally supplied chemical energy, but the rapid turnover rates essential for their biological function require a constant flux of ATP or GTP hydrolysis. The same is…
In equilibrium self-assembly, microscopic building blocks spontaneously self-organize into stable structures as dictated by their interaction potentials, which limits the accessible structural features to those that correspond to global…
The self-assembly of molecules at surfaces can be caused by a range of physical mechanisms. Assembly can be driven by intermolecular forces, or molecule-surface forces, or both; it can result in structures that are in equilibrium or that…
The impact of confinement on self-assembly of particles interacting with short-range attraction and long-range repulsion (SALR) potential is studied for thermodynamic states corresponding to local ordering of clusters or layers in the bulk.…
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…
We show that the self-assembly of a diverse collection of building blocks can be understood within a common physical framework. These building blocks, which form periodic honeycomb networks and nonperiodic variants thereof, range in size…
The evolution of multicellular organisms from monocellular ancestors represents one of the greatest advances of the history of life. The assembly of such multicellular organisms requires signalling and response between cells: over millions…
We describe a computational model for studying the complexity of self-assembled structures with active molecular components. Our model captures notions of growth and movement ubiquitous in biological systems. The model is inspired by…
We investigate the evolutionary dynamics of an idealised model for the robust self-assembly of two-dimensional structures called polyominoes. The model includes rules that encode interactions between sets of square tiles that drive the…