If crosslinking did not discriminate between the different rod regions then, based on surface area alone, the most common inter-QR orientation would be QRs stacked loosely parallel to one another. However, the ccNND distributions (Figure ) show this is not the most prevalent orientation. Instead, only 15% of QRs are stacked parallel to their nearest neighbor, and 25% of QRs display non-parallel nearest neighbor orientations, suggesting that crosslinking favors the spherical QR ends over the central cylindrical section. In addition, these parallel interactions were the only nearest neighbor orientation that showed a significant reduction upon addition of the Man competitor. Therefore, it is plausible that these parallel QR stacks are comprised of protein crosslinking at both QR ends, which are then either fully dissociated into isolated particles or partially dissociated into nonparallel interactions in the presence of Man. This is feasible as further crosslinking between adjacent QR-lectin complexes within the same original QR cluster would be much more kinetically favorable than crosslinking multiple QR-lectin complexes that were freely diffusing in solution. Based on these observations, three interesting conclusions can be deduced: