Self Assembly

Transport and assembly of materials in biological systems is conducted at multiple scales, from the molecular level to whole organisms. With increasing size of building blocks, the assembly of complex, highly functional structures comes at a cost of reduced stability, since unintended connection must be weak in order to maintain sufficient yield. In order to overcome this drawback, nature employs biomolecular motors to assemble functional architectures with specific mechanical and optical properties from large building blocks. For example, the mitotic spindle consists of dozens of oriented microtubules arranged into an aster-like shape by motor proteins. Our work aims to formulate the rules governing these active self-assembly processes, and to show that the boundaries of self-assembly can be greatly expanded by use of biomolecular motors.