Research on nanometer-sized structures has become one of the fastest growing fields of science & engineering. The application potential of nanostructures is diverse, ranging from electronic and detection materials to biomaterials. The most important reason for their popularity is that they are small. From the standpoint of a biological system, submicron-sized nano-objects are generally much smaller than most cells, but are similar in size to many subcellular components (proteins and DNA), cellular organelles (mitochondria, lysosomes, ribosomes, and cytoskeleton), and microorganisms (viruses). Most eukaryotic cells have a typical size of a few tens of microns in diameter. Then the submicron-sized biological objects can be regarded as "biological nanostructures" as compared to "synthetic nanostructures".

Self-assembly can be defined as the spontaneous organization of disordered molecular units into ordered structures as a consequence of specific, local interactions among the components themselves. Molecular self-assembly is referred to as a "bottom-up" approach in contrast to a "top-down" technique where the desired final structure is carved from a larger block of matter. In fact, the formation of most biological nanostructures is also driven by the self-assembly process. Examples include the self-assembly of phospholipids to form cell membranes, the formation of a DNA double helix through specific hydrogen bonding of individual strands, and the folding of a polypeptide chain to form protein tertiary or quaternary structure. As we can find nice examples of self-assembled nanostructures in biological systems, it is not surprising that many synthetic nanostructures have been constructed with inspiration from nature.

In recent years, an interest in manmade or artificial bionanostructures, including peptide-based self-assembled nanostructures has been intense and is expected to escalate further. We intend to develop peptide-based artificial bionanostructures that can mimic or even have enhanced functional properties over the bionanostructures of biological origin. Moreover, we expect that artificial bionanostructures can be designed to have properties that are unprecedented in nature. Since the major driving force that underlies the formation of bionanostructures is a noncovalent self-assembly process, elaborately designed synthetic self-assembly building blocks should be one of the most suitable candidates for the construction of artificial bionanostructures.

LIM Lab is interested in developing self-assembled biological nanostructures and biomaterials, combining in research the principles of chemistry, biology, physics, medicine, materials science, and importantly the inspiration from nature

• » Control & Characterization of Peptide Self-Assembly Process
• » Modulation of Cellular Interactions using Self-Assembled Peptide Nanostructures
• » Development of Peptide-based Biohybrid Materials