Related papers: Viral self-assembly as a thermodynamic process
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-organized complex structures in nature, e.g. viral capsids, hierarchical biopolymers, and bacterial flagella, offer efficiency, adaptability, robustness, and multi-functionality. Can we program the self-assembly of three-dimensional…
Biological systems exploit self-assembly to create complex structures whose arrangements are finely controlled from molecular to mesoscopic level. Herein we report an example of using fully synthetic systems that mimic two levels of…
Protein folding, peptide aggregation and crystallization, as well as adsorption of molecules on soft or solid substrates have an essential feature in common: In all these processes, structure formation is guided by a collective, cooperative…
We present a simple kinetic model for the assembly of small single-stranded RNA viruses that can be used to carry out analytical packaging contests between different types of RNA molecules. The RNA selection mechanism is purely kinetic and…
We present fast simulation methods for the self-assembly of complex shapes in two dimensions. The shapes are modeled via a general boundary curve and interact via a standard volume term promoting overlap and an interpenetration penalty. To…
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…
In this paper we present a three-dimensional discrete model governing the deformation of a viral capsid, modelled as a regular icosahedron and subjected not to cross a given flat rigid surface on which it initially lies in correspondence of…
Using Monte Carlo simulations, we study the assembly of colloidal particles interacting via isotropic core-corona potentials in two dimensions and confined in a circular box. We explore the structural variety at low temperatures as function…
Proteinaceous shells useful for various biomedical applications exhibit a wide range of anomalous structures that are fundamentally different from icosahedral viral capsids described by the Caspar-Klug paradigmatic model. Exploring the…
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…
In recent experiments [T. Basta et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 111, 670 (2014)] lipids and membrane proteins were observed to self-assemble into membrane protein polyhedral nanoparticles (MPPNs) with a well-defined polyhedral protein…
Ellipsoidal particles confined at liquid interfaces exhibit complex self-assembly behaviour due to quadrupolar capillary interactions induced by meniscus deformation. These interactions cause particles to attract each other in either…
Piezo ion channels underlie many forms of mechanosensation in vertebrates, and have been found to bend the membrane into strongly curved dome shapes. We develop here a methodology describing the self-assembly of lipids and Piezo into…
The self-assembly of particles into organized structures is a key feature of living organisms and a major engineering challenge. While it may proceed through the binding of perfectly matched, puzzle-pieces-like particles, many other…
Colloidal molecules are designed to mimic their molecular analogues through their anisotropic shape and interactions. However, current experimental realizations are missing the structural flexibility present in real molecules thereby…
The kinetics of the self-assembly of nanocomponents into a virus, nanocapsule, or other composite structure is analyzed via a multiscale approach. The objective is to achieve predictability and to preserve key atomic-scale features that…
Swarms of self-propelled particles exhibit complex behavior that can arise from simple models, with large changes in swarm behavior resulting from small changes in model parameters. We investigate the steady-state swarms formed by…
The cornerstone of structural biology is the unique relationship between protein sequence and the 3D structure at equilibrium. Although intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) do not fold into a specific 3D structure, breaking this…
Simple RNA viruses efficiently encapsulate their genome into a nano-sized protein shell: the capsid. Spontaneous co-assembly of the genome and the capsid proteins is driven predominantly by electrostatic interactions between the negatively…