From peptide-based material science to protein fibrils: discipline convergence in nanobiology.

This paper illustrates the merits of convergence in nanobiology of two seemingly disparate fields, material science and computational biology. Traditionally, material science has been a discipline involving design and fabrication of synthetic polymers consisting of repeating units. Collaboration with synthetic organic chemists allowed design of new polymers, with a range of altered conformations. Yet, naturally occurring proteins are also materials. Their varied sequences and structures should enrich material science providing more complex shapes, scaffolds and chemical properties. For material scientists, the enhanced coverage of chemical space obtained by integrating proteins and synthetic organic chemistry through the introduction of non-natural residues allows a range of new useful potential applications.