Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Mass. Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
Biomaterials. 2012 Nov;33(33):8240-55. doi: 10.1016/j.biomaterials.2012.06.054. Epub 2012 Aug 28.
Tailored biomaterials with tunable functional properties are desirable for many applications ranging from drug delivery to regenerative medicine. To improve the predictability of biopolymer materials functionality, multiple design parameters need to be considered, along with appropriate models. In this article we review the state of the art of synthesis and processing related to the design of biopolymers, with an emphasis on the integration of bottom-up computational modeling in the design process. We consider three prominent examples of well-studied biopolymer materials - elastin, silk, and collagen - and assess their hierarchical structure, intriguing functional properties and categorize existing approaches to study these materials. We find that an integrated design approach in which both experiments and computational modeling are used has rarely been applied for these materials due to difficulties in relating insights gained on different length- and time-scales. In this context, multiscale engineering offers a powerful means to accelerate the biomaterials design process for the development of tailored materials that suit the needs posed by the various applications. The combined use of experimental and computational tools has a very broad applicability not only in the field of biopolymers, but can be exploited to tailor the properties of other polymers and composite materials in general.
具有可调功能特性的定制生物材料对于从药物输送到再生医学等多种应用都是理想的。为了提高生物聚合物材料功能的可预测性，需要考虑多个设计参数，并结合适当的模型。本文综述了与生物聚合物设计相关的合成和加工的最新进展，重点介绍了在设计过程中整合自下而上的计算建模。我们考虑了三种研究较为深入的生物聚合物材料 - 弹性蛋白、丝和胶原蛋白 - 的实例，评估了它们的层次结构、有趣的功能特性，并对现有的研究这些材料的方法进行了分类。我们发现，由于难以将在不同尺度上获得的见解联系起来，因此很少将集成设计方法（其中既使用实验又使用计算建模）应用于这些材料。在这种情况下，多尺度工程提供了一种强大的方法，可以加速生物材料的设计过程，以开发适合各种应用提出的需求的定制材料。实验和计算工具的结合使用不仅在生物聚合物领域具有广泛的适用性，而且可以用于调整其他聚合物和复合材料的性能。
