IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v4y2013i1d10.1038_ncomms2911.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Non-equilibrium nature of two-dimensional isotropic and nematic coexistence in amyloid fibrils at liquid interfaces

Author

Listed:
  • Sophia Jordens

    (ETH Zurich, Laboratory of Food & Soft Materials)

  • Lucio Isa

    (ETH Zurich, Laboratory for Surface Science & Technology)

  • Ivan Usov

    (ETH Zurich, Laboratory of Food & Soft Materials)

  • Raffaele Mezzenga

    (ETH Zurich, Laboratory of Food & Soft Materials)

Abstract

Two-dimensional alignment of shape-anisotropic colloids is ubiquitous in nature, ranging from interfacial virus assembly to amyloid plaque formation. The principles governing two-dimensional self-assembly have therefore long been studied, both theoretically and experimentally, leading, however, to diverging fundamental interpretations on the nature of the two-dimensional isotropic–nematic phase transition. Here we employ single-molecule atomic force microscopy, cryogenic scanning electron microscopy and passive probe particle tracking to study the adsorption and liquid crystalline ordering of semiflexible β-lactoglobulin fibrils at liquid interfaces. Fibrillar rigidity changes on increasing interfacial density, with a maximum caused by alignment and a subsequent decrease stemming from crowding and domain bending. Coexistence of nematic and isotropic regions is resolved and quantified by a length scale-dependent order parameter S2D(d). The nematic surface fraction increases with interfacial fibril density, but depends, for a fixed interfacial density, on the initial bulk concentration, ascribing the observed two-dimensional isotropic–nematic coexistence to non-equilibrium phenomena.

Suggested Citation

  • Sophia Jordens & Lucio Isa & Ivan Usov & Raffaele Mezzenga, 2013. "Non-equilibrium nature of two-dimensional isotropic and nematic coexistence in amyloid fibrils at liquid interfaces," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 4(1), pages 1-8, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:4:y:2013:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms2911
    DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2911
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2911
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/ncomms2911?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Xiaofang Zhang & Saewon Kang & Katarina Adstedt & Minkyu Kim & Rui Xiong & Juan Yu & Xinran Chen & Xulin Zhao & Chunhong Ye & Vladimir V. Tsukruk, 2022. "Uniformly aligned flexible magnetic films from bacterial nanocelluloses for fast actuating optical materials," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-12, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:4:y:2013:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms2911. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.