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Bio-informed materials: three guiding principles for innovation informed by biology

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Nature provides an endless source of inspiration for advanced materials, fuelled by evolutionary innovations over many millions of years. Capitalizing on this wealth of biological solutions requires an approach to materials innovation that is informed by a holistic understanding of multi-functional biological systems and leverages the defining feature of the natural world — diversity.

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Fig. 1: Leveraging biodiversity by comparing material properties and functional traits among species.

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Acknowledgements

This article arose from an interdisciplinary workshop on bio-informed advanced materials sponsored by the University of Melbourne Hallmark Research Initiative in Bioinspiration. The authors acknowledge the contributions of the following participants to the ideas in this article: L. Barner (Queensland University of Technology), A. T. D. Bennet (University of Melbourne), S. J. Blamires (University of New South Wales; University of Technology), A. R. Evans (Monash University), A. Franklin (University of Melbourne), J. A. Hutchison (University of Melbourne), F. Jativa (University of Melbourne), A.-L. Jessop (Murdoch University), J. Kelley (The University of Western Australia), Y. H. Lau (University of Sydney), J. McGaw (University of Melbourne), J. Mei (Queensland University of Technology), M. Mirkhalaf (Queensland University of Technology), M. Musameh (CSIRO), C. Neto (The University of Sydney), A. J. O’Connor (University of Melbourne), T. Schork (Queensland University of Technology), A. Wang (University of New South Wales), J. A. Watson (University of the Sunshine Coast), L. Wesemann (University of Melbourne), W. W. H. Wong (University of Melbourne). D.S.-F was funded by the Australian Research Council (FT180100216).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of BioSciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia

    Devi Stuart-Fox, Leslie Ng & Mark A. Elgar

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia

    Katja Hölttä-Otto

  3. School of Mathematics, Statistics, Chemistry and Physics, Murdoch University, Murdoch, Western Australia, Australia

    Gerd E. Schröder-Turk

  4. Department of Materials Physics, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

    Gerd E. Schröder-Turk

  5. Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University, Monash, Victoria, Australia

    Nicolas H. Voelcker

  6. Melbourne Centre for Nanofabrication, Clayton, Victoria, Australia

    Nicolas H. Voelcker

  7. School of Science, Technology and Engineering, University of the Sunshine Coast, Fraser Coast, Queensland, Australia

    Gregory S. Watson

Authors
  1. Devi Stuart-Fox
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  2. Leslie Ng
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  3. Mark A. Elgar
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  4. Katja Hölttä-Otto
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  5. Gerd E. Schröder-Turk
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  6. Nicolas H. Voelcker
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  7. Gregory S. Watson
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Contributions

D.S.-F. and L.N. produced the initial draft manuscript and figure. All authors contributed to ideation and manuscript writing. Authors are listed in alphabetical order following the first two authors in the author list.

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Correspondence to Devi Stuart-Fox.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Stuart-Fox, D., Ng, L., Elgar, M.A. et al. Bio-informed materials: three guiding principles for innovation informed by biology. Nat Rev Mater 8, 565–567 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-023-00590-w

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