Chiral Quasicrystalline Order and Dodecahedral Geometry in Exceptional Families of Viruses

Abstract

On the example of exceptional families of viruses we i) show the existence of a completely new type of matter organization in nanoparticles, in which the regions with a chiral pentagonal quasicrystalline order of protein positions are arranged in a structure commensurate with the spherical topology and dodecahedral geometry, ii) generalize the classical theory of quasicrystals (QCs) to explain this organization, and iii) establish the relation between local chiral QC order and nonzero curvature of the dodecahedral capsid faces.

8 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Virus shapes and buckling transitions in spherical shells
• Density waves theory of the capsid structure of small icosahedral viruses

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Statistical analysis of sizes and shapes of virus capsids and their resulting elastic properties
• Extended topological defects as sources and outlets of dislocations in spherical hexagonal crystals
• Horizons and free path distributions in quasiperiodic Lorentz gases
• Structures of Spherical Viral Capsids as Quasicrystalline Tilings
• Anomalous proteinaceous shells with octagonal local order
• Density waves, dodecahedral geometry and structures of some spherical viral capsids