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Integrating Materials and Life Sciences Toward the Engineering of Biomimetic Materials

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Research in the field of biological and biomimetic materials constitutes a case study of how traditional research boundaries are becoming increasingly obsolete. Positioned at the intersection of life and physical sciences, it is becoming more and more evident that future development in this area will require extensive interaction between materials and life scientists. To highlight this cross-talking, we provide a brief overview of the field, intended to illustrate how these disciplines can be integrated. We start with a short historical perspective, emphasizing the role of biologists in initiating early studies in the field. In the second part of the paper, a summary of important biochemical concepts and techniques relevant to biological materials is presented, with the goal of guiding nonspecialists towards the relevant techniques and knowledge required to investigate potential model systems. In the third part, we describe two case studies that emphasize the critical role of biosynthesis in understanding structure–function–property relationships in biological materials. We conclude with some remarks related to our own perception of how integration of materials and life sciences will lead to future developments in the field.

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Notes

  1. It should be mentioned that the plots were prepared with the data available at the time of publication. Since then, many more materials and quantitative data have been obtained, which do not appear on these early Ashby plots of biological materials.

  2. The series Methods in Molecular Biology published by Humana Press and available online from “Springer Protocol”34 provides step-by-step, concise protocols for such work. Many references in this section come from this series.

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Acknowledgements

We are thankful for support provided by the Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF) through a NRF Fellowship (A.M.), and the Singapore Maritime Port Authority (MPA) through the Maritime Clean Energy Research Program (MCERP) under the umbrella of the Energy Research Institute at NTU (ERI@N).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore, Singapore

    Ali Miserez & Paul A. Guerette

  2. School of Biological Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore, Singapore

    Ali Miserez

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  1. Ali Miserez
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  2. Paul A. Guerette
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Correspondence to Ali Miserez.

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Miserez, A., Guerette, P.A. Integrating Materials and Life Sciences Toward the Engineering of Biomimetic Materials. JOM 64, 494–504 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11837-012-0296-2

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