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Coarsening, the process where larger structures grow at the expense of smaller ones, is a fundamental aspect of multiphase systems. The cell cytoplasm exemplifies an out-of-equilibrium multiphase system, where phase-separated condensates…

We have formulated a theory of self-assembly based on the notion of local gauge invariance at the mesoscale. Local gauge invariance at the mesoscale generates the required long- range entropic forces responsible for self-assembly in binary…

Self-assembly of matter in solution generally relies on attractive interactions that overcome entropy and drive the formation of higher-order molecular and particulate structures. Such interactions play key roles in a variety of contexts,…

Actin is a key component of the cytoskeleton, which plays central roles in cell motility, division, growth, and tensile strength. To enable this wide range of transient mechanical processes and properties, networks of actin filaments…

Self-assembly is the mechanism that controls the formation of well defined structures from disordered pre-existing parts. Despite the importance of self-assembly as a manufacturing method and the increasingly large number of experimental…

As computers get faster, researchers -- not hardware or algorithms -- become the bottleneck in scientific discovery. Computational study of colloidal self-assembly is one area that is keenly affected: even after computers generate massive…

Protein aggregation is of particular interest due to its connection with many diseases and disorders. Many factors can alter the dynamics and result of this process, one of them being the diffusivity of the monomers and aggregates in the…

Semiflexible polymers are ubiquitous in natural and artificial systems, where their intermediate rigidity gives rise to rich structural and dynamical behavior. Confinement plays a central role in these behaviors, as spatial restrictions can…

We prove that by successively combining subassemblies, we can achieve sublinear construction times for "staged" assembly of micro-scale objects from a large number of tiny particles, for vast classes of shapes; this is a significant advance…

Assembly of protein complexes like virus shells, the centriole, the nuclear pore complex or the actin cytoskeleton is strongly determined by their spatial structure. Moreover it is becoming increasingly clear that the reversible nature of…

Proteins can combine into functional elements in living cells or self-assemble into unwanted structures in a number of diseases. The resulting aggregates often display filamentous morphologies across a large range of protein shapes and…

The effective interaction between a sphere with an open cavity (lock) and a spherical macroparticle (key), both immersed in a hard sphere fluid, is studied by means of Monte Carlo simulations. As a result, a 2d map of the key-lock effective…

We use numerical simulations to show how noninteracting hard particles binding to a deformable elastic shell may self-assemble into a variety of linear patterns. This is a result of the nontrivial elastic response to deformations of shells.…

Most of the DNA that composes a complex organism is non-coding and defined as junk. Even the coding part is composed of genes that affect the phenotype differently. Therefore, a random mutation has an effect on the specimen fitness that…

The kinetics for the assembly of viral proteins into a population of capsids can be measured in vitro with size exclusion chromatography or dynamic light scattering, but extracting mechanistic information from these studies is challenging.…

Many structural properties of conventional passive materials are known to arise from the symmetries of their microscopic constituents. By contrast, it is largely unclear how the interplay between cell shape and self-propulsion controls the…

Solution self-assembly of amphiphilic block copolymers (BCs) is typically performed by a solvent-to-water exchange. However, BC assemblies are often trapped in metastable states depending on the mixing conditions such as the magnitude and…

One of the most intriguing results of single molecule experiments on proteins and nucleic acids is the discovery of functional heterogeneity: the observation that complex cellular machines exhibit multiple, biologically active…

The prediction of the three-dimensional native structure of proteins from the knowledge of their amino acid sequence, known as the protein folding problem, is one of the most important yet unsolved issues of modern science. Since the…

Self-assembly of complex and functional materials remains a grand challenge in soft material science. Efficient assembly depends on a delicate balance between thermodynamic and kinetic effects, requiring fine-tuning affinities and…