Hacking Biology for Nanotechnology

Nature is a master of nanotechnology; the structures and machines of the living world are far more sophisticated than any existing synthetic structure. These arose through evolution, a trial and error search that, in the course of billions of years, has discovered how to organize simple molecular “building blocks” into functional units that allow organisms to succeed at their goals of survival and reproduction. We would like to find optimal nano-materials and structures to achieve our own (not-necessarily biological) objectives, but without having to spend billions of years developing them.

In this course, we will explore the vast chemical interaction space of the biological world, which harbors countless molecular structures of potential use to us. We’ll see that it is increasingly possible to create and design new technologies by rearranging existing biomolecules into new structures, which are discovered through a combination of experiments and simulations. These nanostructure have functionality including disease detection, actuators for soft robots, and devices that seamlessly integrate with the human body — all built on top of the existing biochemical building blocks found throughout life.