2023/09/08 by Carlos M. Duque, Douglas M. Hall, Duque, Carlos M. +9 · 3 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Materials and Mechanics #FOS: Biological sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Micro and Nano Robotics #Modular Robots and Swarm Intelligence #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) #Subcellular Processes (q-bio.SC)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2309.04632
openalex publication_date 2023/09/08 · openalex created_date 2023/09/13 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/03
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 cubic minimal surfaces. Inspired by a recent class of programmable DNA origami colloids, we demonstrate that the economy of design in these crystalline assemblies -- in terms of the growth of the number of distinct particle species required with the increased size-scale (e.g. periodicity) -- is comparable to viral shells. We further test the role of geometric specificity in these assemblies via dynamical assembly simulations, which show that conditions for simultaneously efficient and high-fidelity assembly require an intermediate degree of flexibility of local angles and lengths in programmed assembly. Off-target misassembly occurs via incorporation of a variant of disclination defects, generalized to the case of hyperbolic crystals. The possibility of these topological defects is a direct consequence of the very same symmetry principles that underlie the economical design, exposing a basic tradeoff between design economy and fidelity of programmable, size controlled assembly.