Understanding the Assembly of Proteins into Sheets with Coarse-Grained Models

Proteins can self-assemble into a wide variety of structures from amorphous aggregates and crystals to complex virus capsids. Understanding the rich assembly behavior of proteins benefits not only the field of structural biology, but also has applications in biopharmaceutical industry and materials science. Recent studies even suggest that liquid-liquid phase separation of protein droplets within cells might have a biological function. This rich phenomenology is ultimately the product of the short-ranged, anisotropic protein-protein interactions. Using elementary soft matter models to elucidate links between the microscopic properties of proteins and their assembly has met with some success but more complex behaviors have not yet been fully investigated. Here, we investigate the phase behavior of a protein that self-assembles into a single-layer sheet. Understanding this process will help explore possibilities for biomaterial applications.