Related papers: Resolving Speed and Encoding Bottlenecks in Fast H…
Self-assembly kinetics is usually described by approaches which assume that the shape of the aggregates has a definite form (e.g., spherical, cylindrical, cubic, etc), however that is unlikely to be the case in many finite-sized…
Assembly and stability of mitotic spindle is governed by the interplay of various intra-cellular forces, e.g. the forces generated by motor proteins by sliding overlapping anti-parallel microtubules (MTs) polymerized from the opposite…
Peptides are recognized for their varied self-assembly behaviors, forming a wide array of structures and geometries, such as spheres, fibers, and hydrogels, each presenting a unique set of material properties. The functionalities of these…
Many remarkably robust, rapid and spontaneous self-assembly phenomena in nature can be modeled geometrically starting from a collection of rigid bunches of spheres. This paper highlights the role of symmetry in sphere-based assembly…
The goal of inverse self-assembly is to design inter-particle interactions capable of assembling the units into a desired target structure. The effective assembly of complex structures often requires the use of multiple components, each new…
Anisotropy at the level of the inter-particle interaction provides the particles with specific instructions for the self-assembly of target structures. The ability to synthesize non-spherical colloids, together with the possibility of…
The interaction between a flexible polymer in good solvent and smaller associating solute molecules such as amphiphiles (surfactants) is considered theoretically. Attractive correlations, induced in the polymer because of the interaction,…
Different models such as diffusion-collision and nucleation-condensation have been used to unravel how secondary and tertiary structures form during protein folding. However, a simple mechanism based on physical principles that provide an…
A phenomenological model hamiltonian to describe the folding of a protein with any given sequence is proposed. The protein is thought of as a collection of pieces of helices; as a consequence its configuration space increases with the…
Self-assembling, semi-flexible polymers are ubiquitous in biology and technology. However, there remain conflicting accounts of the equilibrium kinetics for such an important system. Here, by focusing on a dynamical description of a minimal…
We propose a general framework for solving inverse self-assembly problems, i.e. designing interactions between elementary units such that they assemble spontaneously into a predetermined structure. Our approach uses patchy particles as…
Autonomous assembly is a crucial capability for robots in many applications. For this task, several problems such as obstacle avoidance, motion planning, and actuator control have been extensively studied in robotics. However, when it comes…
Large protein complexes are assembled from protein subunits to form a specific structure. In our theoretic work, we propose that assembly into the correct structure could be reliably achieved through an assembly line with a specific…
Isotropic pairwise interactions that promote the self assembly of complex particle morphologies have been discovered by inverse design strategies derived from the molecular coarse-graining literature. While such approaches provide an avenue…
Cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) provides a unique opportunity to study the structural heterogeneity of biomolecules. Being able to explain this heterogeneity with atomic models would help our understanding of their functional…
In suitable environments, proteins, nucleic acids and certain synthetic polymers fold into unique conformations. This work shows that it is possible to construct lattice models of foldable heteropolymers by expressing the energy only in…
This perspective will overview an emerging paradigm for self-organized soft materials, {\it geometrically-frustrated assemblies}, where interactions between self-assembling elements (e.g. particles, macromolecules, proteins) favor local…
We consider self-assembly of proteins into a virus capsid by the methods of molecular dynamics. The capsid corresponds either to SPMV or CCMV and is studied with and without the RNA molecule inside. The proteins are flexible and described…
We use a coarse-grained model of DNA-functionalized particles to understand the role of DNA chain length on their self-assembly. We find that the increasing chain length for a given particle size decreases the propensity to form ordered…
Actin is one of the most studied cytoskeleton proteins showing a very rich span of structures. It can self-assemble actively into dynamical structures that govern the mechanical properties of the cell, its motility and its division.…