The role of directional interactions in the designability of generalized heteropolymers

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 7; no. 1; pp. 4986 - 10
• Main Authors: Cardelli, Chiara, Bianco, Valentino, Rovigatti, Lorenzo, Nerattini, Francesca, Tubiana, Luca, Dellago, Christoph, Coluzza, Ivan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 10.07.2017; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 119/118; 639/301/54/989; 639/301/923/1028; 639/301/923/916; 639/301/923/966; Biopolymers; Humanities and Social Sciences; Monomers; multidisciplinary; Polymers; Science; Science (multidisciplinary)
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-04720-7

Heteropolymers are important examples of self-assembling systems. However, in the design of artificial heteropolymers the control over the single chain self-assembling properties does not reach that of the natural bio-polymers, and in particular proteins. Here, we introduce a sufficiency criterion to identify polymers that can be designed to adopt a predetermined structure and show that it is fulfilled by polymers made of monomers interacting through directional (anisotropic) interactions. The criterion is based on the appearance of a particular peak in the radial distribution function, that we show being a universal feature of all designable heteropolymers, as it is present also in natural proteins. Our criterion can be used to engineer new self-assembling modular polymers that will open new avenues for applications in materials science.