Bionanodesign: Following Nature’s Touch

摘要

The functional character of all biological molecular machinesnarises from an intimate link between their physical and chemicalnvariables, which manifests itself most vividly at nanoscale wherenseveral energy scales converge (see Phillips, R.; Quake, S. R.nThe Biological Frontier of Physics. Phys. Today 2006, 59,n38-43). The complexity arising from this confluence of scalesnmakes teasing out the principles that connect form and functionna formidable task. This is especially true for proteins. DNAbasednassemblies with their smaller set of rules and studied innmore than a hundred laboratories across the globe have beennshown to perform significantly beyond what Nature providedn(see Seeman, N. An Overview of Structural DNA Nanotechnology.nMol. Biotechnol. 2007, 37, 246-257). In this book,nRyadnov takes a broad look at a variety of self-assemblednbioinspired systems based on proteins and DNA. The booknconsists of three main sections: the first is dedicated to DNAnnanotechnology, the second to encapsulation in protein cages,nand the third to molecular scaffolds that mimic the extracellularnmatrix and provide basic materials for tissue engineering.