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 hight 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
