Biotemplated nanostructures: directed assembly of electronic and optical materials using nanoscale complementarity

The worlds of biology and materials engineering have traditionally been quite distinct. The spontaneous assembly of biological materials presents a stark contrast to the rational fabrication conventionally required for high-performance materials. The merger of these diverse fields represents a tremendous opportunity, given that biomolecules can organize into intricate, functionally sophisticated structures exactly the sort of precise control urgently needed to make the next generation of materials for medicine, computing, communications, energy, and the environment. In the last several years, tremendous advances have been made towards using the structures of biomolecules as scaffolds and templates for nanomaterials. This overview discusses how the sequence and structural information encoded within proteins and nucleic acids can be used to program the synthesis of nanomaterials.