Self-Assembly and Tissue Fusion of Toroid-Shaped Minimal Building Units

Self-assembly of SNARE fusion proteins into star-shaped oligomers.

Three evolutionarily conserved proteins known as SNAREs (soluble N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive fusion protein attachment protein receptors) mediate exocytosis from single cell eukaryotes to neurons. Among neuronal SNAREs, syntaxin and SNAP-25 (synaptosome-associated protein of 25 kDa) reside on the plasma membrane, whereas synaptobrevin resides on synaptic vesicles prior to fusion. The SNARE motif...

Building polyhedra by self-assembly

Self-assembly of minimal COPII cages.

The small G-protein Sar1 and the cytosolic complexes Sec23/24 and Sec13/31 associate sequentially on endoplasmic reticulum membranes to form a protein coat named COPII, which drives the formation of transport vesicles. Using dynamic light scattering, we show that Sec23/24 and Sec13/31 can self-assemble in a stoichiometric manner in solution to form particles with hydrodynamic radii in the range...

Synthesis and self-assembly of propeller-shaped amphiphilic molecules.

Propeller-shaped aromatic amphiphiles based on a conformationally flexible aromatic segment are shown to self-assemble into well-defined discrete nanostructures with high fluorescence characteristic.

Minimal Model of Self-Assembly: Emergence of Diversity and Complexity

Molecular self-assembly is ubiquitous in nature, yet prediction of assembly pathways from fundamental interparticle interactions has yet to be achieved. Here, we introduce a minimal self-assembly model with two attractive and two repulsive beads bound into a tetrahedron. The model is associated with a single parameter η defined as the repulsive to attractive interaction ratio. We explore self-a...