Rotational diffusion affects the dynamical self-assembly pathways of patchy particles.

ABSTRACT: Predicting the self-assembly kinetics of particles with anisotropic interactions, such as colloidal patchy particles or proteins with multiple binding sites, is important for the design of novel high-tech materials, as well as for understanding biological systems, e.g., viruses or regulatory networks. Often stochastic in nature, such self-assembly processes are fundamentally governed by rotational and translational diffusion. Whereas the rotational diffusion constant of particles is usually considered to be coupled to the translational diffusion via the Stokes-Einstein relation, in the past decade it has become clear that they can be independently altered by molecular crowding agents or via external fields. Because virus capsids naturally assemble in crowded environments such as the cell c

SUBMITTER: Newton AC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4687537 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature