Folded-foldamer pushing approach
This page is about the possible approach of
pushing (or pulling if possible) small already self-assembled structures around on a surface
in order to assemble them via SPM (Top down positional assembly) to bigger structures.
- Small means: All the input parts have undergone just the first level of hierarchical self-assembly.
- Structures might e.g. include stiff & sturdy designed de-novo proteins.
This approach competes against self-assembly.
And this is a symptom of the Positional assembly redundancy blockade.
PROs & CONs
Advantages:
Basically evading development difficulties of selfassembly. E.g. no need to develop:
– large orthogonal sets of complementary surfaces or
– iterative selfassembly
– squigglesembly, circumsembly, ...
Difficulties for pushing folded proteins around by SPM may include:
– tip bluntness at the larger scale of softer proteins
– SPM control for larger vertical motions being very limited
– only perhaps: crushing the specimen issues
Inferiorities relative to self-assembly when working include:
– only one product (or a few with additional difficulties) rather than several orders of magnitude simultaneously
– assembly of each new product takes long
Relation to the direct path
As positional assembly is introduced right after the first hierarchical selfassembly level in this approach,
there are some similarities in directness to the direct path.
But given the parts handled are bigger it may be easier. Size is not the only aspect of difficulty though.
