From vesicles to materials: bioinspired strategies for fabricating hierarchically structured soft matter

Abstract

Certain organisms including species of mollusks, polychaetes, onychophorans and arthropods produce exceptional polymeric materials outside their bodies under ambient conditions using concentrated fluid protein precursors. While much is understood about the structure-function relationships that define the properties of such materials, comparatively less is understood about how such materials are fabricated and specifically, how their defining hierarchical structures are achieved via bottom-up assembly. Yet this information holds great potential for inspiring sustainable manufacture of advanced polymeric materials with controlled multi-scale structure. In the present perspective, we first examine recent work elucidating the formation of the tough adhesive fibres of the mussel byssus via secretion of vesicles filled with condensed liquid protein phases (coacervates and liquid crystals)—highlighting which design principles are relevant for bio-inspiration. In the second part of the perspective, we examine the potential of recent advances in drops and additive manufacturing as a bioinspired platform for mimicking such processes to produce hierarchically structured materials. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Bio-derived and bioinspired sustainable advanced materials for emerging technologies (part 1)’.

Mussels Fabricate Porous Glues via Multiphase Liquid–Liquid Phase Separation of Multiprotein Condensates

“…However, a deeper mechanistic understanding of the roles that specific proteins and functional groups play in this process in vivo is still required. Nonetheless, extracted insights are very relevant for ongoing work creating mussel-inspired glues and polymers , and for developing sustainable material fabrication methods for producing soft materials with complex hierarchical structure (e.g., via 3D printing or microfluidics). , …”

“…Protein-based biological materials provide inspiration for the development of advanced materials produced through sustainable means. , Marine mussels ( Mytilus spp. ) produce proteinaceous holdfast fibers known as byssal threads, which have become a prominent and well-established model system for inspiring advanced polymers, coatings, and glues .…”

Biological Materials Processing: Time-Tested Tricks for Sustainable Fiber Fabrication

“…Programming, in this sense, refers to the innate tendency of the building blocks to respond to specific local stimuli (e.g., pH, ion concentration, mechanical shear) in a manner which leads to self-assembly of the molecules into the predestined hierarchical structure and configuration. 38 We can boil this process down to three key features: (1) stimuli responsive building blocks, (2) condensed fluid phases in controlled microenvironments, and (3) triggered self-assembly and solidification (Figure 1), which we will expand upon below.…”

Biomimetic Hierarchical Superstructures: Approaches Using Bicontinuous Microemulsions and Electrodeposition

“…Biological structures presenting a wide variety of growth patterns are formed as a result of the molding processes of surface-active molecules, mainly polymers, and some lowmolecular-weight polar lipids (Holmberg, 2004;Amstad and Harrington, 2021). Likewise, the inhibitory and activator coupling reactions between the chemical precursors and their spatially-constrained diffusion, was described by the reactiondiffusion model introduced by A.M. Turing (Turing, 1952).…”