Identities About Self Assembly
Presidential Lectures are a series of free public colloquia spotlighting groundbreaking research across four themes: neuroscience and autism science, physics, biology, and mathematics and computer science. These curated, high-level scientific talks feature leading scientists and mathematicians and are designed to foster discussion and drive discovery within the New York City research community. We invite those interested in these topics to join us for this weekly lecture series.
In biological systems, there are striking examples where complicated structures (i.e., the bacterial ribosome) can spontaneously assemble, driven by specific interactions between the components. But how can systems be designed to have this property? Recent technological advances have created the opportunity for making technologically relevant systems that self assemble, using strands of DNA or objects coated with DNA. We will use these systems as inspiration to formulate theoretical models to understand how self assembly works in these systems, through theory, numerical simulation and experiment — and start to speculate as to whether resulting principles might be useful for unravelling the rules of biological self-assembly.