ABSTRACT
Recently, a great deal of attention has been focused on the development of biomaterials derived from peptides, oligopeptides, and proteinacious materials for a variety of technological applications, including chromatographic supports-especially in affinity chromatography-bioreactors, biosensors, and as functionalized building blocks for intelligent materials. There are numerous driving motivations supporting the development of peptide and protein-bearing interfacial structures. Proteins are Mother Nature’s worker bees. A very large number of naturally occurring proteins and protein subunits have been separated, identified, and characterized structurally and functionally. Thus, they constitute an advantageous starting point for fabrication of interfacial structures which can effect molecular recognition and couple that molecular recognition to a physical or chemical signal. Also, since the study of proteins has a long history and is well developed, many of the tools which have been developed to understand structure and function of proteins in homogeneous solution and in vivo are directly transferable to artificial assemblies, where planar or more complex interfacial structures are decorated with protein assemblies. Finally, the set of experimental tools known collectively as genetic engineering has been exploited to extend the distribution of naturally occurring proteins, to elaborate their structural and functional capabilities and to provide a rich array of engineered molecular architectures for construction of biomolecular assemblies.
