Self-organizing materials built with DNA
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Biological self-organization as an inspiration for materials science Biological form and structure have long fascinated humanity. Cave paintings from as far back as 30,000 BC depict animal and plant forms,1 and natural philosophers have collected, described, and classified vast numbers of paleontological and contemporary biological samples. Such samples helped Charles Darwin develop his evolutionary theory. Zoologist E. Haeckel, one of Darwin’s great popularizers, drew the often highly symmetric beauty of life forms,2 which led Haeckel to speculate about the transition from crystalline substances to living matter. More recently, scientists have aspired to quantitatively understand biological organization. In his book On Growth and Form, the “first biomathematician” d’Arcy Wentworth Thompson applied mathematical and physical reasoning to describe the general principles that govern the appearance of biological forms.3 On the molecular level, E. Schrödinger speculated on the biological necessity of structures that are both regular (like crystals) and aperiodic, allowing storage and transmission of information.4 Similar ideas about the role of information and complexity in the context of materials were later explored by A.L. Mackay.5 Mathematicians such as A. Turing and J. von Neumann also introduced mechanistic and algorithmic descriptions of pattern formation, morphogenesis, and self-replication.6,7
Such models of biological organization suggest means by which forms and patterns might be generated artificially. From a materials science point of view, this is of great interest, as there are many fascinating aspects of biological structures that one would like to mimic in an engineering context. For example, biological forms such as folded tissues, butterfly wings, muscles, or the genome often have hierarchical structure and are patterned on multiple length scales. They are responsive and even active; many are highly resilient and can regrow or heal when damaged. In this article, we discuss how the ability to control DNA interactions can provide a link between theoretical ideas about biological organization and material design. DNA’s unique dual role as a biopolymer and information carrier or “molecular code” allows it to implement mechanisms inspired by biological selforganization to create functional materials with similar properties.
Models of self-organization and self-assembly Both self-organization and self-assembly refer to the formation of “structure” from simple components without external guidance. But while self-assembly usually means the association of molecular or particulate building blocks into a well-defined structure at thermodynamic equilibrium, “self-organization” refers to the formation of patterns far from thermal equilibrium and also includes temporal and spatiotemporal patterns.
Friedrich C. Simmel, Technical University Munich, Germany; [email protected] Rebecca Schulman, Johns Hopkins University, USA; [email protected] doi:10.1557/mrs.2017.271
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