Inward growth by nucleation : Multiscale self-assembly of ordered membranes

Striking morphological similarities found between superstructures of a wide variety of seemingly unrelated crystalline membrane systems hint at the existence of a common formation mechanism. Resembling systems such as multiwalled carbon nanotubes, bacterial protein shells, or peptide nanotubes, the self-assembly of SDS/b-cyclodextrin complexes leads to monodisperse multilamellar microtubes. We uncover the mechanism of this hierarchical self-assembly process by time-resolved small- and ultrasmall-angle x-ray scattering. In particular, we show that symmetric crystalline bilayers bend into hollow cylinders as a consequence of membrane line tension and an anisotropic elastic modulus. Starting from single-walled microtubes, successive nucleation of new cylinders inside preexisting ones drives an inward growth. As both the driving forces that underlie the self-assembly behavior and the resulting morphologies are common to systems of ordered membranes, we believe that this formation mechanism has a similarly general applicability.

Bibliographic Details

Main Authors:	Landman, Jasper, Ouhajji, Samia, Prévost, Sylvain, Narayanan, Theyencheri, Groenewold, Jan, Philipse, Albert P., Kegel, Willem K., Petukhov, Andrei V.
Format:	Article/Letter to editor biblioteca
Language:	English
Subjects:	Life Science,
Online Access:	https://research.wur.nl/en/publications/inward-growth-by-nucleation-multiscale-self-assembly-of-ordered-m
Tags:	Add Tag No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!