Author Description

Bioinspired concepts are becoming increasingly integrated into materials and devices intended for medical applications. Biological organisms evolve within specific environmental constraints, giving rise to elegant and efficient strategies for fabricating materials that often outperform man-made materials of similar composition. A main goal of the interdisciplinary field of bioinspired materials is to unlock the secrets of this process--the composition, processing, self-assembly, hierarchical organization, and properties of biological materials--and use this information to synthesize and engineer novel functional materials for a variety of practical applications. The authors are from a variety of scientific disciplines, including biology, biochemistry, chemistry, physics, materials science, mechanical engineering, and bioengineering. This book will appeal to readers interested in the cross-disciplinary fertilization of new ideas in this emerging field. The first volume of this book includes sections focused on the bioinspired approaches using biological macromolecules including poly(nucleic acids), polypeptides, and the derivatives. Both volumes cover the interdisciplinary fields of biological, synthetic, and the hybrid materials and describe their medical applications ranging from molecular to cellular levels.