Related papers: Viral self-assembly as a thermodynamic process
We propose and investigate an extension of the Caspar-Klug symmetry principles for viral capsid assembly to the programmable assembly of size-controlled triply-periodic polyhedra, discrete variants of the Primitive, Diamond, and Gyroid…
We elucidate the molecular forces leading to assembly of two dimensional membrane-like structures composed of a one rod-length thick monolayer of aligned rods from an immiscible suspension of hard rods and depleting polymers. We perform…
We describe a viscocapillary instability that can perturb the spherical symmetry of cellular aggregates in culture, also called multicellular spheroids. In the condition where the cells constituting the spheroid get their necessary…
We study theoretically in the present work the self-assembly of molecules in an open system, which is fed by monomers and depleted in partial or complete clusters. Such a scenario is likely to occur for example in the context of viral…
Self-assembly is a ubiquitous process in synthetic and biological systems, broadly defined as the spontaneous organization of multiple subunits (e.g. macromolecules, particles) into ordered multi-unit structures. The vast majority of…
Epithelial monolayers are a central building block of complex organisms. Topological defects have emerged as important elements for single cell behavior in flat epithelia. Here we theoretically study such defects in a three-dimensional…
Building structures with hierarchical order through the self-assembly of smaller blocks is not only a prerogative of nature, but also a strategy to design artificial materials with tailored functions. We explore in simulation the…
We present results from particle simulations with isotropic medium range interactions in two dimensions. At low temperature novel types of aggregated structures appear. We show that these structures can be explained by spontaneous symmetry…
Quasicrystals are fascinating structures, characterized by strong positional order but lacking the periodicity of a crystal. In colloidal systems, quasicrystals are typically predicted for particles with complex or highly specific…
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.…
Using large deviation theory and principles of stochastic optimal control, we show that rare molecular dynamics trajectories conditioned on assembling a specific target structure encode a set of interactions and external forces that lead to…
There is evidence that the self-assembly of complex molecular systems often proceeds hierarchically, by first building subunits that later assemble in larger entities, in a process that can repeat multiple times. Yet, our understanding of…
Self-assembly is one of the prevalent strategies used by living systems to fabricate ensembles of precision nanometer-scale structures and devices. The push for analogous approaches to create synthetic nanomaterials has led to the…
In contrast to extensively studied defects in traditional materials, we report here for the first time a systematic investigation of the formation mechanism of intrinsic defects in self-assembled peptide nanostructures. The Monte Carlo…
We describe the growth of vesicles, due to the accretion of lipid molecules to their surface, in terms of linear irreversible thermodynamics. Our treatment differs from those previously put forward by consistently including the energy of…
Understanding how highly symmetric, robust, monodisperse protein cages self-assemble can have major applications in various areas of bio-nanotechnology, such as drug delivery, biomedical imaging and gene therapy. We develop a model to…
Most spherical viruses exhibit icosahedral symmetry, yet the growth of viral shells remains poorly understood due to the short lifetimes and broad size distribution of assembly intermediates. Classical nucleation theory has been widely…
Comments: 6 pages RevTeX, 6 Postscript figures. We review a statistical mechanics treatment of the stability of globular proteins based on a simple model Hamiltonian taking into account protein self interactions and protein-water…
We consider the thermodynamically driven self-assembly of spheres onto the surface of a central sphere. This assembly process forms self-limiting, or terminal, anisotropic clusters (N-clusters) with well defined structures. We use Brownian…
The control of the thermocapillary assembly of colloidal particle clusters is important for a variety of applications, including the creation of photonic crystals for microelectronics and optoelectronics, membrane formation for…