Active self-disassembly enhances the yield of self-assembled structures

TL;DR

This paper presents a lattice model demonstrating that active self-disassembly can improve the yield of self-assembled structures beyond traditional thermodynamic limits, with implications for biological systems.

Contribution

It introduces a novel lattice model showing how active self-disassembly can enhance self-assembly yields beyond equilibrium conditions.

Findings

Active self-disassembly can increase structure yield.

Conditions identified where active disassembly outperforms passive assembly.

Biological implications discussed.

Abstract

We introduce a lattice model to probe the effect of active self-disassembly on equilibrium self-assembly. Surprisingly, we find conditions under which active self-disassembly enhances the yield of a target structure above that achieved by self-assembly alone when the latter is already favoured thermodynamically. We discuss biological implications of our findings.