Landau Theory and the Emergence of Chirality in Viral Capsids
  We present a generalized Landau-Brazovskii theory for the solidification of chiral molecules on a spherical surface. With increasing sphere radius one encounters first intervals where robust achiral density modulations appear with icosahedral symmetry via first-order transitions. Next, one en- counters intervals where fragile but stable icosahedral structures still can be constructed but only by superposition of multiple irreducible representations. Chiral icoshedral structures appear via continuous or very weakly first-order transitions. Outside these parameter intervals, icosahedral symmetry is broken along a three-fold axis or a five-fold axis. The predictions of the theory are compared with recent numerical simulations. 
Sanjay Dharmavaram, Fangming Xie, William Klug, Joseph Rudnick, Robijn   Bruinsma
physics.bio-ph cond-mat.soft q-bio.SC