Tuning the Kinetic Trapping in Chemically Fueled Self-Assembly

Nature uses dynamic, molecular self-assembly to create cellular architectures that adapt to their environment. For example, a guanosine triphosphate (GTP)-driven reaction cycle activates and deactivates tubulin for dynamic assembly into microtubules. Inspired by dynamic self-assembly in biology, recent studies have developed synthetic analogs of assemblies regulated by chemically fueled reaction cycles. A challenge in these studies is to control the interplay between rapid disassembly and kinetic trapping of building blocks known as dynamic instabilities. In this work, we show how molecular design can tune the tendency of molecules to remain trapped in their assembly. We show how that design can alter the dynamic of emerging assemblies. Our work should give design rules for approaching dynamic instabilities in chemically fueled assemblies to create new adaptive nanotechnologies.