Fig. 3.

Structural variation among microcompartments generated by our molecular model. As in Fig. 1, the cargo is shown in green, the shell is shown in gray, and topological defects are shown in red. (A) Structures from the ensemble evincing the distinct regimes of sphericity and faceting. Note that two-dimensional projections can obscure some of the variation. (B) Typical assemblies are not substantially elongated, indicated by a histogram of the sphericity $\alpha$ (SI Appendix, section S7). (C) Faceting necessitates relatively sharp angles between shell monomers surrounding a fivefold defect (SI Appendix, section S7). A histogram of this angle $⟨{\theta }_{\text{defect}}⟩$ (averaged over all defects in an assembled structure) underscores the typically strong faceting visible in A.