| Current
Nanoscience
ISSN: 1573-4137
Current Nanoscience
Volume 2, Number 2, May 2006
Contents
Bio-Inspired Nanomaterials
Guest Editor: Yong Zhou
Editorial Pp. 79
Recent Advances on Polymer Directed Crystal Growth
and Mediated Self-Assembly of Nanoparticles Pp. 81-92
Shu-Hong Yu and Shao-Feng Chen
[Abstract]
Interfacing “Soft” and “Hard”
Matter with Exquisite Chemical Control Pp. 93-103
Youn-Hi Woo and Julio A. Camarero
[Abstract]
Molecular Self-Assembly of Peptide Nanostructures:
Mechanism of Association and Potential Uses Pp. 105-111
Meital Reches and Ehud Gazit
[Abstract]
DNA Nanotechnology: A Rapidly Evolving Field
Pp. 113-122
Kyle Lund, Berea Williams, Yonggang Ke, Yan Liu and Hao
Yan
[Abstract]
Recent Progress in Biomolecule-Templated Nanomaterials
Pp. 123-134
Yong Zhou
[Abstract]
General Articles
Guided Self-Assembly of Fe3O4
Nanoparticles on Chemically Active Surface Templates Generated
by Electro-Oxidative Nanolithography Pp. 135-141
Stephanie Hoeppener, Andrei S. Susha, Andrey
L. Rogach, Jochen Feldmann and Ulrich S. Schubert
[Abstract]
Biomimetic S-Layer Supported Lipid Membranes
Pp. 143-152
Bernhard Schuster and Uwe B. Sleytr
[Abstract]
Abstracts
[Back to top]
Editorial
Beyond the agricultural and industrial revolutions of the
past, a global technology revolution is now leading to social,
economic, political, and personal change throughout the world.
A number of technology-related trends appear to have significant
effects on modern society. The frontiers of research in science,
engineering and technology are being driven to a dominant
extent by developments in nanomaterials. Nanomaterials are
a rapidly evolving field of material science, which were invented
late in the twentieth century. Nanomaterials encompass a diverse
collection of disciplines and involve many different faces.
All of the nanomaterials share a central concept: the ability
to exhibit distinct properties from the corresponding bulk
materials originating from quantum effect. Recently, a growing
number of interdisciplinary research themes between biology
and nanomaterials have emerged. While biotechnology is revolutionizing
living organisms, nanotechnology will produce products, components,
and systems that are miniature, smart and multi-functional.
Bio-inspired nanomaterials harness biological processes, and
shape, chemical and physical functionality of biomolecules
for atom-levelly controllable engineering and manufacturing
of advanced materials with extreme precision. The potential
developments of these advanced materials are likely to change
almost everything from vaccines to artificial tissues and
organs to quantum computers. Bio-directed control over the
fundamental building blocks of nanomaterials will be expected
to initiate a real “second industrial revolution”
in the middle and second half of the 21st century.
Current Nanoscience is devoted to spotlighting most
recent advances in nanoscience and nanotechnology. The present
first hot-topic issue of Current Nanoscience covers
several remarkable aspects of the bio-inspired nanomaterial
fields by a collection of five impressive review articles.
The issue starts with an introduction by Shuhong Yu about
the recent advance in polymer-directed crystal growth and
mediated self-assembly of nanoparticles. The hydrophilic polymer
including biopolymer-controlled morphosynthesis and biomineralization
of various technically important inorganic crystals are covered
with a focus on how to generate inorganic crystals with unusual
specialty and complexity in structure. Further review by Camarero
deals with “Interfacing ‘Soft’ and ‘Hard’
Matter with Exquisite Chemical Control”. This review
describes recent development of new chemical and biological
technologies for the site-specific immobilization of proteins
onto inorganic materials and their potential applications
to the fields of micro and nanotechnology. Gazit et al.
describes “Molecular self-assembly of peptide nanostructures:
Mechanism of association and potential uses.” Hao Yan
and coworkers introduce DNA-based nanotechnology. This review
includes programmable self-assembly of two-dimensional DNA
lattices, DNA lattice-templated nanoelectronics and DNA-based
nanomechanical devices. Our laboratory works on the bio-inspired
inorganic materials area with specific emphasis on templated
synthesis. Our review briefly outlines the recent varieties
of bio-templated inorganic synthesis from metal, semiconductor
to magnetic materials. The involved bio-templates include
surface layer (S-layer) of the crystalline bacteria and ferritins
for two-dimensional order array of nanoparticles, and linear
virus, microtubules and lipid nanotubes for nanowires, nanotubes
and one-dimensional nanodot arrays.
We sincerely hope that this specific review collection of
the thematic issue on bio-inspired nanomaterials will provide
researchers in these fields with newest developments in this
rapidly evolving field for advancing research. We also wish
to stimulate the next generation of breakthroughs of the bio-inspired
nanomaterials, which will further enrich human life.
Yong Zhou
Guest Editor,
Nanoarchitectonics Research Center (NARC),
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology
(AIST), Tsukuba,
JAPAN
[Back to top]
Recent Advances on Polymer Directed Crystal Growth
and Mediated Self-Assembly of Nanoparticles
Shu-Hong Yu and Shao-Feng Chen
The complex morphology and structures of biomaterials in biological
systems have attracted chemists and material scientists to
understand self- assembly mechanisms of their emergence. The
growth of biomaterials is strongly influenced by soluble biopolymer,
low mass organic molecules in solution, and insoluble tissue
around crystals. Mimicking the nature, various polymers with
different functionalities and their combinations of these
functionalities have been designed or adopted in order to
control the morphology and complexity of inorganic crystals.
In addition, natural polymers or modified functional polymers
with specific functional groups have also been used for such
mimicking process.
In this review, the latest development of synthetic/natural
polymer directed crystal growth and mediated self-assembly
of nanoparticles will be overviewed. Soluble polymers including
biopolymers and synthetic polymers as soft templates have
shown remarkable effects on the directed crystal growth and
controlled self-assembly of inorganic nanoparticles. The flexible
combinations of these soluble polymers with other additives
or reaction systems make it possible for access of various
inorganic materials with complex form, taking advantages of
the synergistic effects of polymer with other low mass organic
molecules or reaction environments. In contrast, insoluble
polymers with different functionalities can be used as hard
templates or substrates to offer suitable crystallization
sites for the guided crystallization and self-assembly processes.
Recent advances have demonstrated that polymer directed crystal
growth and mediated self-assembly of nanoparticles can provide
promising ways for rational design of various ordered inorganic
and inorganic-organic hybrid materials with complexity and
structural speciality.
[Back to top]
Interfacing “Soft” and “Hard”
Matter with Exquisite Chemical Control
Youn-Hi Woo and Julio A. Camarero
The present paper reviews the recent development of new
chemical and biological technologies for the site-specific
immobilization of proteins onto inorganic materials and their
potential applications to the fields of micro and nanotechnology.
[Back to top]
Molecular Self-Assembly of Peptide Nanostructures:
Mechanism of Association and Potential Uses
Meital Reches and Ehud Gazit
Molecular self-assembly offers unique directions for the
fabrication of novel supramolecular structures and advanced
materials. The inspiration for the development of such structures
is often derived from self-assembling modules in biology,
as natural systems form complex structures from simple building
blocks such as amino acids, nucleic acids and lipids. Peptide-based
nanostructures indicate an important route toward the production
of ordered nanostructures as several studies had demonstrated
their ability to form well organized assemblies. This includes
cyclic peptides designed with alternating D- and L- amino
acids, amphiphile peptides, peptide-conjugates and ionic self-complementary
peptides. A naturally occurring self-assembly process of nano
scale objects by polypeptides is that of amyloid fibril formation.
These 7-10 nm fibrillar assemblies were already used for the
formation of conductive nanowires. Short peptides have been
used as model systems to study the molecular mechanism that
leads to amyloid fibril formation. Based on the analysis of
short amyloid forming fragments, it was recently suggested
by our group and others that aromatic interactions may play
a significant role in the process of amyloid fibrils formation
in several cases. This hypothesis led to the discovery that
the core recognition motif of the Alzheimer’s β-amyloid
polypeptide, the diphenylalanine element, has all the molecular
information needed to self assemble into a novel class of
peptide nanotubes. A highly similar analog and the simplest
aromatic dipeptide, the diphenylglycine, forms spherical nanometric
assemblies. Both designed and peptide fragment nanostructures
were suggested to have many applications in various fields
including molecular electronics, tissue engineering, and material
science.
[Back to top]
DNA Nanotechnology: A Rapidly Evolving Field
Kyle Lund, Berea Williams, Yonggang Ke, Yan Liu and Hao
Yan
In recent years, a number of research groups have begun
developing nanofabrication methods based on DNA self-assembly.
DNA is an extraordinarily versatile material for designing
nano-architectural motifs, due in large part to its programmable
G-C and A-T base pairing into well-defined secondary structures.
Today, DNA nanotechnology has evolved into a unique interdisciplinary
field, between chemistry, physics, computer science, biology
and materials science. This review surveys some recent research
mostly based on the authors and their collaborators’
work.
[Back to top]
Recent Progress in Biomolecule-Templated Nanomaterials
Yong Zhou
Harnessing nature’s amazing ability to form self-assembled
structures for nanotechnology applications is an attractive
alternative to conventional fabrication methods. In recent
years, benefiting from the specific properties of biomolecules
like highly order architecture and precise molecular recognition,
there is increasing interest in biomolecules for templating
the growth of a large variety of inorganic nanomaterials.
The present review briefly assesses recent progress in biomolecule-scaffolded
nanomaterials. Several biomolecules and three main templating
principles emerging in recent years have been outlined, namely,
(1) crystalline surface layers (S-layers) of bacterial cells
with a regular distribution of physicochemical affinity sites
at the protein surface for the fabrication of highly oriented
semiconductor and metal nanocluster arrays; (2) nanometer-sized
ferritin and ferritin-like protein cages as the size-constrained
reaction environments for encapsulation of inorganic materials;
(3) various biomolecules of linear morphology such as viruses,
microtubules and lipid nanotubes for creation of one-dimensional
array of nanoparticles, and tubular and wire-like nanostructures.
[Back to top]
Guided Self-Assembly of Fe3O4
Nanoparticles on Chemically Active Surface Templates Generated
by Electro-Oxidative Nanolithography
Stephanie Hoeppener, Andrei S. Susha, Andrey
L. Rogach, Jochen Feldmann and Ulrich S. Schubert
An approach for the site-selective binding of magnetic Fe3O4
particles onto predefined surface templates is reported. Chemically
active surface patterns are prepared by electro-oxidative
nanolithography performed with the conductive tip of a scanning
probe microscope on n-octadecyltrichlorosilane (OTS)
monolayers self-assembled on silicon. The chemical functionalization
allows prefabricated nanoparticles with an organic ligand
shell to attach selectively on these surface sites, just by
immersing the sample into the particle solution. Besides the
use of the active surface patterns to guide the assembly of
Fe3O4
nanoparticles with nanometer precision, several aspects of
the patterning process are briefly discussed in terms of optimization
of the obtainable line width.
[Back to top]
Biomimetic S-Layer Supported Lipid Membranes
Bernhard Schuster and Uwe B. Sleytr
The present review focuses on a unique biomolecular construction
kit including surface-layer (S layer) proteins as basic building
blocks and patterning elements, but also major classes of
biological molecules such as (membrane) proteins, lipids,
and heteropoly¬saccharides for the design of functional
S layer supported lipid membranes. The biomimetic approach
copying the supramolecular building principle of most archaeal
cell envelopes composed of a plasma membrane and a closely
associated S layer lattice has resulted in robust lipid membranes.
Reconstitution of responsive transmembrane proteins has been
demonstrated in lipid membranes generated on S layer-coated
substrates and electrodes. This is a particular challenge
as one-third of all proteins are membrane proteins such as
pore-forming proteins, ion channels or receptors. Hence membrane
proteins are a preferred target for pharmaceuticals (currently
more than 60% of all consumed drugs). This novel type of supported
lipid membrane is seen as one of the most innovative strategies
in membrane protein-based nanobiotechnology with potential
applications that range from pharmaceutical (high-throughput)
drug screening over lipid (bio)chips to the detection of biological
warfare agents.
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