Genetically encoded, chemically elaborated polymeric materials

Abstract

Polymers and their self-assembled structures constitute an essential part of life: Advances in synthetic polymer chem. have produced high-performance plastics that sustain our daily life, whereas natural polymers and their assembled forms execute highly specific functions or exhibit superb mech. properties. In particular, proteins are monodisperse polymers that fold into a specific nanoscale structure according to environmental factors. These defined structures exert highly complicated and precise mech. motions, processing environmental inputs by the combination of allosteric effects; therefore, they serve as state-of-art nanoscale machineries in living systems. I envision that the seamless integration of functional protein building blocks in the realm of real-world materials will be the next grand challenge in this field. Finding interdisciplinary solns., mainly from the design principles in supramol. chem., mol. biol. and polymer science, will give rise to a library of novel functional materials. Specific challenges toward this goal include (1) designing protein-based macromol. architectures in multiple dimensions, (2) understanding structure-property relationship of the hybrid materials, (3) designing artificial macromol. structural modules that mech. exert motions, (4) translational application of the hybrid material in the field of nanomedicine and (5) integration of living organisms by protein engineering in the end-use polymeric materials. In this symposium, the recent efforts and future directions will be presented and discussed.