Growth of equilibrium structures built from a large number of distinct component types

Abstract

We use simple analytic arguments and lattice-based computer simulations to study the growth of structures made from a large number of distinct component types. Components possess 'designed' interactions, chosen to stabilize an equilibrium target structure in which each component type has a defined spatial position, and 'undesigned' interactions that allow components to bind in a compositionally-disordered way. We find that high-fidelity growth of the equilibrium target structure can happen in the presence of substantial attractive undesigned interactions, as long as the energy scale of the set of designed interactions is chosen appropriately. This observation may help explain why equilibrium DNA 'brick' structures self-assemble even if undesigned interactions are not suppressed [Ke et al. Science 338, 1177 (2012)]. We also find that high-fidelity growth of the target structure is most probable when designed interactions are drawn from a distribution that is as narrow as possible. We use this result to suggest how to choose complementary DNA sequences in order to maximize the fidelity of multicomponent self-assembly mediated by complementary DNA interactions. We also comment on the prospect of growing macroscopic structures in this manner

arXiv comment13 pages, 10 figures

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Cited by in corpus (16)

• Rational design of self-assembly pathways for complex multicomponent structures
• Design principles for non-equilibrium self-assembly
• Theoretical prediction of free-energy landscapes for complex self-assembly
• The Information Capacity of Specific Interactions
• Associative pattern recognition through macro-molecular self-assembly
• Temperature Protocols to Guide Selective Self-Assembly of Competing Structures
• DNA brick self-assembly with an off-lattice potential
• Minimal physical requirements for crystal growth self-poisoning
• Hierarchical assembly may be a way to make large information-rich structures
• Probing the Theoretical and Computational Limits of Dissipative Design
• Effects of co-ordination number on the nucleation behaviour in many-component self-assembly
• Stochastic Yield Catastrophes and Robustness in Self-Assembly
• Switch-like surface binding of competing multivalent particles
• Accessing Semi-Addressable Self Assembly with Efficient Structure Enumeration
• Predicting the outcome of the growth of binary solids far from equilibrium
• Landscape of kinetically trapped binary assemblies