Wong Joyce Y, McDonald John, Taylor-Pinney Micki, Spivak David I, Kaplan David L, Buehler Markus J
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
Nano Today. 2012 Dec 1;7(6):488-495. doi: 10.1016/j.nantod.2012.09.001.
Tailored materials with tunable properties are crucial for applications as biomaterials, for drug delivery, as functional coatings, or as lightweight composites. An emerging paradigm in designing such materials is the construction of hierarchical assemblies of simple building blocks into complex architectures with superior properties. We review this approach in a case study of silk, a genetically programmable and processable biomaterial, which, in its natural role serves as a versatile protein fiber with hierarchical organization to provide structural support, prey procurement or protection of eggs. Through an abstraction of knowledge from the physical system, silk, to a mathematical model using category theory, we describe how the mechanism of spinning fibers from proteins can be translated into music through a process that assigns a set of rules that governs the construction of the system. This technique allows one to express the structure, mechanisms and properties of the 'material' in a very different domain, 'music'. The integration of science and art through categorization of structure-property relationships presents a novel paradigm to create new bioinspired materials, through the translation of structures and mechanisms from distinct hierarchical systems and in the context of the limited number of building blocks that universally governs these systems.
具有可调谐特性的定制材料对于生物材料应用、药物递送、功能涂层或轻质复合材料而言至关重要。设计此类材料的一种新兴范例是将简单构建块的分层组装构建成具有卓越性能的复杂结构。我们以丝绸为例来回顾这种方法，丝绸是一种可通过基因编程和加工的生物材料，在其天然作用中，它作为一种具有分层结构的多功能蛋白质纤维，用于提供结构支撑、捕食猎物或保护卵。通过将来自物理系统丝绸的知识抽象为使用范畴论的数学模型，我们描述了如何通过一个分配一组控制系统构建规则的过程，将从蛋白质纺丝纤维的机制转化为音乐。这种技术使人们能够在一个截然不同的领域“音乐”中表达“材料”的结构、机制和特性。通过对结构 - 属性关系进行分类来整合科学与艺术，呈现了一种新颖的范例，即通过从不同分层系统翻译结构和机制，并在普遍控制这些系统的有限数量构建块的背景下，创造新的受生物启发的材料。
