(202c) Functionally Organized Hierarchical Nanobiomaterials

Nature is unparalleled in its structural and functional diversity. Living organisms make fantastic materials under myriad conditions with properties we cannot emulate today using conventional approaches. In many cases, nature has provided us with a blueprint to design and assemble both natural and synthetic building blocks to create a new generation of functional, organized, and responsive materials. We have taken cues from nature to design materials with unique structural and functional properties, along with new process technologies with the ability to produce a wide range of biomimetic structures. Specifically, we have focused on the generation of nanostructures that are functionalized with and in some cases constructed from biological molecules, complete with tailored selectivities and biocatalytic activities. In this talk I will highlight our recent efforts to exploit the interface of biology with materials science, with a particular focus on enzyme-nanomaterial composites with a wide range of activities that endow surfaces with self-cleaning properties. In particular, surfaces have been generated with tailored activity against hospital-acquired infections (e.g., MRSA) and serves as a potentially broadly applicable route to eliminating toxic compounds and pathogenic microorganisms from common surfaces. In another example, biocatalysis has been used to generate small molecules that self-assemble with high precision to give novel architectures with functional properties.