Filamentous phages as building blocks for reconfigurable and hierarchical self-assembly

TL;DR

This paper explores how filamentous bacteriophages can serve as versatile building blocks for creating complex, reconfigurable, and hierarchical structures through self-assembly, revealing insights into entropy, chirality, and topology in soft matter.

Contribution

It demonstrates the use of engineered filamentous phages as programmable colloidal rods for diverse self-assembled structures, expanding the understanding of entropy-driven and chiral effects in soft matter.

Findings

Various fluid-like micronic structures can be formed from filamentous phages.

Chiral properties of viruses influence the self-assembly process.

The study provides a blueprint for bio-inspired self-assembly of rod-like particles.

Abstract

Filamentous bacteriophages such as fd-like viruses are monodisperse rod-like colloids that have well defined properties: diameter, length, rigidity, charge and chirality. Engineering those viruses leads to a library of colloidal rods which can be used as building blocks for reconfigurable and hierarchical self-assembly. Their condensation in aqueous solution \th{with additive polymers which act as depletants to induce} attraction between the rods leads to a myriad of fluid-like micronic structures ranging from isotropic/nematic droplets, colloid membranes, achiral membrane seeds, twisted ribbons, $\pi$-wall, pores, colloidal skyrmions, M\"obius anchors, scallop membranes to membrane rafts. Those structures and the way they shape shift not only shed light on the role of entropy, chiral frustration and topology in soft matter but it also mimics many structures encountered in different fields of science. On one hand, filamentous phages being an experimental realization of colloidal hard rods, their condensation mediated by depletion interactions constitutes a blueprint for self-assembly of rod-like particles and provides fundamental foundation for bio- or material oriented applications. On the other hand, the chiral properties of the viruses restrict the generalities of some results but vastly broaden the self-assembly possibilities.