Many biological systems rely on the ability to self-assemble
target
structures from different molecular building blocks using nonequilibrium
drives, stemming, for example, from chemical potential gradients.
The complex interactions between the different components give rise
to a rugged energy landscape with a plethora of local minima on the
dynamic pathway to the target assembly. Exploring a toy physical model
of multicomponents nonequilibrium self-assembly, we demonstrate that
a segmented description of the system dynamics can be used to provide
predictions of the first assembly times. We show that for a wide range
of values of the nonequilibrium drive, a log-normal distribution emerges
for the first assembly time statistics. Based on data segmentation
by a Bayesian estimator of abrupt changes (BEAST), we further present
a general data-based algorithmic scheme, namely, the stochastic landscape
method (SLM), for assembly time predictions. We demonstrate that this
scheme can be implemented for the first assembly time forecast during
a nonequilibrium self-assembly process, with improved prediction power
compared to a naïve guess based on the mean remaining time
to the first assembly. Our results can be used to establish a general
quantitative framework for nonequilibrium systems and to improve control
protocols of nonequilibrium self-assembly processes.