W. Seth Childers, Anil K. Mehta, Rong Ni, Yan Liang and David G. Lynn
Center for Fundamental and Applied Molecular Evolution
NSF/NASA Center for Chemical Evolution
Departments of Chemistry and Biology, Emory University, Atlanta GA 30322
The elaborate molecular assemblies, the intricate chemical strategies, and the cooperative molecular networks that have emerged in living systems continue to inspire new materials development. Increasingly synthetic biopolymers are seen as more than static materials, or even merely responsive to a changing physical environment, but as assemblies that can profit from the experience. Synthetic genomes adapt and change, evolve in response to pressure, i.e., learn from experience, such that the systems they direct behave intelligently. Charles Darwin first recognized the idea of molecular systems behaving intelligently when he imagined a chemically rich “warm pond” from which evolution originated, an idea published decades before the duplex structure of DNA was proposed. A marvelous image of a population of simple molecules, storing and copying information to ensure their own survival, an intelligent behavior that is not restricted to complex genomes, but is an inherent property of matter that could be translated into new intelligent materials through a bottom-up design of synthetic chemical evolution. Here we will review some of the wide diversity of forms accessible through self-assembly of biopolymers and demonstrate, even in this limited sampling, the accessibility and diversity of scaffolds for the creation of intelligent materials. This effort is beginning to reveal the foundation on which a synthetic approach to chemical evolution might be constructed for the generation of new materials.
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