Virus structure inspires novel understanding of onion-like carbon nanoparticles

What is it about?

Symmetry is ubiquitous in the natural world. It occurs in gemstones and snowflakes and even in biology, an area typically associated with complexity and diversity. There are striking examples: the shapes of virus particles, such as those causing the common cold, are highly symmetrical and look like tiny footballs. We have developed new mathematical tools to better understand the implications of this high degree of symmetry to virus structure, assembly and dynamics.

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Why is it important?

In this paper we show that these generalised symmetries apply more widely in the natural world and also account for the structures of Russian-doll-like arrangements of carbon cages known as carbon onions. It was known previously that individual shells could be modeled using symmetry techniques, but the fact that the entire structure is collectively constrained by a single symmetry principle is a surprising new result with implications for assembly and potential applications to nanotechnology.