Figure 3.
(a) Hypothetic situation in which two monomers (M1 and M2) are mixed that are endowed with complementary binding units at the edges, similar to GC + iGiC. Each monomer can form linear supramolecular oligomers with itself or with the other with an identical association constant K. In addition, each monomer can self-associate into cyclic tetramer species with identical effective molarity EM. Narcissistic self-sorting occurs when M1 and M2 exclusively self-associate into cyclic cM41 and cM42 species. (b, c) Relationship between self-sorting fidelity (% relative abundance of M1 (or M2) in the cyclic cM41 (or cM42) species) as a function of total concentration: (b) cyclotetramerization EM of cM41 (or cM42) at a fixed K = 103 M–1, or (c) association constant K between M1 and/or M2 fixing EM at 10–2 M.