Emerging area: biomaterials that mimic and exploit protein motion (original) (raw)
* Corresponding authors
a Departments of Biomedical Engineering, Pharmacology, Orthopedics and Rehabilitation, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA
E-mail: wlmurphy@wisc.edu
Abstract
Traditional dynamic hydrogels have been designed to respond to changes in physicochemical inputs, such as pH and temperature, for a wide range of biomedical applications. An emerging strategy that may allow for more specific “bio-responsiveness” in synthetic hydrogels involves mimicking or exploiting nature's dynamic proteins. Hundreds of proteins are known to undergo pronounced conformational changes in response to specific biochemical triggers, and these responses represent a potentially attractive toolkit for design of dynamic materials. This “emerging area” review focuses on the use of protein motions as a new paradigm for design of dynamic hydrogels. In particular, the review emphasizes early examples of dynamic hydrogels that harness well-known protein motions. These examples then serve as templates to discuss challenges and suggest emerging directions in the field. Successful early examples of this approach, coupled with the fundamental properties of nature's protein motions, suggest that protein-based materials may ultimately achieve specific, multiplexed responses to a range of biochemical triggers. Applications of this new class of materials include drug delivery, biosensing, bioactuation, and tissue engineering.
You have access to this article
Please wait while we load your content... Something went wrong. Try again?
Article information
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1039/C0SM01351J
Article type
Emerging Area
Submitted
20 Nov 2010
Accepted
22 Dec 2010
First published
03 Feb 2011
Download Citation
Soft Matter, 2011,7, 3679-3688
Permissions
Emerging area: biomaterials that mimic and exploit protein motion
W. L. Murphy,Soft Matter, 2011, 7, 3679DOI: 10.1039/C0SM01351J
To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.
If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.
If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.
Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.