The ‘allosteron’ model for entropic allostery of self-assembly

Using the simple ‘allosteron’ model, we show that it is possible, in principle, to elicit pathways by which fluctuation allostery affects self-assembly of protein complexes. We treat the cases of (i) protein fibrils and nucleation, (ii) n-mer protein complexes, and (iii) weakly attractive allosteric interactions in protein-like soft nanoscale objects that can be tuned to define exclusive self-associating families. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Allostery and molecular machines’.