Rotation driven translational diffusion of polyatomic ions in water: A novel mechanism for breakdown of Stokes-Einstein relation

2017 ◽  
Vol 146 (16) ◽  
pp. 164502 ◽  
Author(s):  
Puja Banerjee ◽  
Subramanian Yashonath ◽  
Biman Bagchi
2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (50) ◽  
pp. 15308-15313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur C. Newton ◽  
Jan Groenewold ◽  
Willem K. Kegel ◽  
Peter G. Bolhuis

Predicting the self-assembly kinetics of particles with anisotropic interactions, such as colloidal patchy particles or proteins with multiple binding sites, is important for the design of novel high-tech materials, as well as for understanding biological systems, e.g., viruses or regulatory networks. Often stochastic in nature, such self-assembly processes are fundamentally governed by rotational and translational diffusion. Whereas the rotational diffusion constant of particles is usually considered to be coupled to the translational diffusion via the Stokes–Einstein relation, in the past decade it has become clear that they can be independently altered by molecular crowding agents or via external fields. Because virus capsids naturally assemble in crowded environments such as the cell cytoplasm but also in aqueous solution in vitro, it is important to investigate how varying the rotational diffusion with respect to transitional diffusion alters the kinetic pathways of self-assembly. Kinetic trapping in malformed or intermediate structures often impedes a direct simulation approach of a kinetic network by dramatically slowing down the relaxation to the designed ground state. However, using recently developed path-sampling techniques, we can sample and analyze the entire self-assembly kinetic network of simple patchy particle systems. For assembly of a designed cluster of patchy particles we find that changing the rotational diffusion does not change the equilibrium constants, but significantly affects the dynamical pathways, and enhances (suppresses) the overall relaxation process and the yield of the target structure, by avoiding (encountering) frustrated states. Besides insight, this finding provides a design principle for improved control of nanoparticle self-assembly.


2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (12) ◽  
pp. 1381-1389
Author(s):  
Victor P. Arkhipov ◽  
Ruslan V. Arkhipov ◽  
Natalia A. Kuzina ◽  
Andrei Filippov

Abstract Translational diffusion coefficients of ethoxylated isononylphenol molecules C9H19C6H4O(C2H4O)nH in carbon tetrachloride were measured by nuclear magnetic resonance diffusometry. The hydrodynamic radii of the molecules were determined within the framework of the Stokes–Einstein relation. We showed that ethoxylated isononylphenols in carbon tetrachloride do not form micelles, and the dependence of the diffusion coefficients and, accordingly, the hydrodynamic radii of the nonionic surfactants on the number of oxyethylene groups have a kink in the region n = 6–8.


Author(s):  
E. Keyhani

The matrix of biological membranes consists of a lipid bilayer into which proteins or protein aggregates are intercalated. Freeze-fracture techni- ques permit these proteins, perhaps in association with lipids, to be visualized in the hydrophobic regions of the membrane. Thus, numerous intramembrane particles (IMP) have been found on the fracture faces of membranes from a wide variety of cells (1-3). A recognized property of IMP is their tendency to form aggregates in response to changes in experi- mental conditions (4,5), perhaps as a result of translational diffusion through the viscous plane of the membrane. The purpose of this communica- tion is to describe the distribution and size of IMP in the plasma membrane of yeast (Candida utilis).Yeast cells (ATCC 8205) were grown in synthetic medium (6), and then harvested after 16 hours of culture, and washed twice in distilled water. Cell pellets were suspended in growth medium supplemented with 30% glycerol and incubated for 30 minutes at 0°C, centrifuged, and prepared for freeze-fracture, as described earlier (2,3).


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