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Edited by Paul M. Chaikin, New York University, New York, NY, and approved December 23, 2013 (received for review July 18, 2013)
Significance
One of the hallmarks of living systems is self-replication. Mimicking nature’s ability to self-replicate would not only give more insight into biological mechanisms of self-replication but also could potentially revolutionize material science and nanotechnology. Over the past 60 y, much research, both theoretical and experimental, has been focused on understanding and realizing self-replicating systems. However, artificial systems that efficiently self-replicate remained elusive. In this paper, we construct schemes for self-replication of small clusters of isotropic particles. By manipulating the energy landscape of the process, we show how exponential replication can be achieved. As a proof of principle, we show exponential self-replication of an octahedral cluster using finite-temperature computer simulations.
Abstract
We construct schemes for self-replicating clusters of spherical particles, validated with computer simulations in a finite-temperature heat bath. Each particle has stickers uniformly distributed over its surface, and the rules for self-replication are encoded into the specificity and strength of interactions. Geometrical constraints imply that a compact cluster can copy itself only with help of a catalyst, a smaller cluster that increases the surface area to form a template. Replication efficiency requires optimizing interaction energies to destabilize all kinetic traps along the reaction pathway, as well as initiating a trigger event that specifies when the new cluster disassociates from its parent. Although there is a reasonably wide parameter range for self-replication, there is a subtle balance between the speed of the reaction, and the error rate. As a proof of principle, we construct interactions that self-replicate an octahedron, requiring a two-particle dimer for a catalyst. The resulting self-replication scheme is a hypercycle, and computer simulations confirm the exponential growth of both octahedron and catalyst replicas.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: zorana{at}seas.harvard.edu.
Author contributions: Z.Z. and M.P.B. designed research, performed research, analyzed data, and wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1313601111/-/DCSupplemental.
Self-replicating colloidal clusters
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