Engineering materials from the bottom up - Overview

Self-assembly is a ubiquitous phenomenon in nature. Proteins, polynucleotides, polysaccharides, and lipids may assemble themselves to form multitudes of structures from the molecular level up to the macroscopic world of everyday experience. This phenomenon presents materials with versatile functionality and highly specialized, sometimes unique performance. In particular, proteins or peptides, informational polymers composed of permutations of a set of 20+ natural (and synthetic) amino acids, offer an attractive engineering challenge to design tailored structures and materials with novel properties and functionalities. Nature, through an evolutionary process, has demonstrated the versatility and multiplicity of applications to be addressed by peptides and proteins. An historical overview of materials research sets the scene for a series of papers that reflect upon the current challenges and successes of research in the field of self-assembling peptides and proteins. It leads the reader from understanding the underlying physics of self-assembly; both from a theoretical as well as an experimental perspective to the challenges of making large quantities of peptides that enable industrial exploration and commercialization in a variety of applications. To date, the self-assembly of peptide and proteins patent literature indicates a major application focus on the medical and pharmaceutical market. However, over the last few years, the general literature on peptide and protein self-assembly research shows a rapidly growing opportunity for advanced material engineering in many other areas