Modeling the Kinetics of Open Self-Assembly

In this work, we explore theoretically the kinetics of molecular self-assembly in the presence of constant monomer flux as an input, and a maximal size. The proposed model is supposed to reproduce the dynamics of viral self-assembly for enveloped virus. It turns out that the kinetics of open self-assembly is rather quantitatively different from the kinetics of similar closed assembly. In particular, our results show that the convergence toward the stationary state is reached through assembly waves. Interestingly, we show that the production of complete clusters is much more efficient in the presence of a constant input flux, rather than providing all monomers at the beginning of the self-assembly.