Self-assembly Mechanisms in Plant Cell Wall Components

Abstract

This review on self-assembly in biological fi brous composites presents theory and simulation to elucidate the principles and mechanisms that govern the thermodynamics, material science, and rheology of biological anisotropic soft matter that are involved in the growth/self-assembly/material processing of these materials. Plant cell wall, a multi-layered biological fi brous composite, is presented as a model biological system to investigate self-assembly mechanisms in nature's material synthesis. In order to demonstrate the universality of the presented models and the mechanisms investigated, references to other biological/ biomimetic systems are made when applicable. The integration of soft matter physics theories and models with actual biological data for plant cell walls provides a foundation for understanding growth, form, and function in biological material and offers a fi rm platform for biomimetic innovation.

Perspective: Geometrically frustrated assemblies

“…93 A similar approach has been applied to study domain formation in chiral assemblies of cellulose in plant cell walls. 94 In these models, the frustration free energy takes the Frank free energy of chiral nematic phase,…”

Surface Anchoring Effects on the Formation of Two-Wavelength Surface Patterns in Chiral Liquid Crystals

“…Since these surface ultrastructures with micro/nano scale features provide unique optical responses and iridescent colors [7][8][9][10][11], understanding their formation mechanism is crucial in realizing structural color in nature and in biomimetic design of novel photonic systems. As similar nano/micro scale periodic wrinkles are formed at the free surface of both synthetic and biological cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) [12,13], and CLC phases are widely found in Nature and living soft materials both in vivo and vitro [13,14], nematic liquid crystal self-assembly has been proposed as the formation mechanism of helicoidal plywoods and the surface ultrastructures in many fibrous composites ranging from plant cell walls to arthropod cuticles [15][16][17][18][19]. Moreover, it has been shown that the characteristics of chiral phases control the unique colors and optical properties exhibited in the films and fibers made by cellulose-based CLCs [20,21].…”

Macroscopic magnetic self-assembly

“…The assembling energies are frequently surface energy, magnetic or electric interactions. At the macroscopic scale, the assembling energy is often of magnetic origin (Gross and Dorigo, 2008), or mechanical connections (Penrose, 1959;Penrose and Penrose, 1957) and the source of disturbing energy can be tumbling (Boncheva et al, 2002;Gracias et al, 2000), shaking (Jacobs et al, 2002), stirring (Bowden et al, 1997;Terfort et al, 1997) or turbulent flow (Ilievski et al, 2011b;Murugesan et al, 2015;Roland et al, 1992;Zheng et al, 2004). Particles encounter each other in the provided energy landscape in order to self-assemble.…”

“…Particles self-assemble due to their mutual attraction and the disturbing energy in the environment. In macroscopic self-assembly the mutual attraction or assembling energy is frequently magnetic (Gross and Dorigo, 2008), and the disturbing energy turbulent flow (Ilievski et al, 2011b;Murugesan et al, 2015;Roland et al, 1992;Zheng et al, 2004). Turbulence is inherently random and chaotic and .…”