The energy landscape as a unifying theme in molecular science

The potential energy surface (PES) underlies most calculations of structure, dynamics and thermodynamics in molecular science. In this contribution connections between the topology of the PES and observable properties are developed for a coarse-grained model of virus capsid self-assembly. The model predicts that a thermodynamically stable, kinetically accessible icosahedral shell exists for pentameric building blocks of the right shape: not too flat and not too spiky. The structure of the corresponding PES is probably common to other systems where directed searches avoid Levinthal's paradox, such as 'magic number' clusters, protein folding and crystallization.