Biomimetic Approaches for the Design and Fabrication of Bone-to-Soft Tissue Interfaces

Bone-to-soft tissue interfaces are responsible for transferring loads between tissues with significantly dissimilar material properties. The examples of connective soft tissues are ligaments, tendons, and cartilages. Such natural tissue interfaces have unique microstructural properties and characteristics which avoid the abrupt transitions...

A Critical Review on the Use of Molecular Imprinting for Trace Heavy Metal and Micropollutant Detection

Molecular recognition has been described as the “ultimate” form of sensing and plays a fundamental role in biological processes. There is a move towards biomimetic recognition elements to overcome inherent problems of natural receptors such as limited stability, high-cost, and variation in response. In recent years, several alternatives have...

Transport receptor occupancy in nuclear pore complex mimics

Nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) regulate all molecular transport between the nucleus and the cytoplasm in eukaryotic cells. Intrinsically disordered Phe-Gly nucleoporins (FG-Nups) line the central conduit of NPCs to impart a selective barrier where large proteins are excluded unless bound to a transport receptor (karyopherin; Kap). Here, we...

Towards a bottom-up reconstitution of the nuclear pore complex

At first glance nanopores may appear simple, almost intuitive, to understand given that they are, quite literally, ‘just’ very small pores in a membrane. In fact, one may even wonder why at all we need trained scientists to study such seemingly simple entities. The short answer is that nanopores, as the word suggests, are nanoscale entities and,...

Development of a novel wasp-inspired friction-based tissue transportation device

Currently existing tubular transportation systems for the extraction of large tissue masses during Minimal Invasive Surgery (MIS) are subjected to a large amount of operating limitations. In this study, a novel transportation mechanism (patented) was developed inspired by the egg-laying structure of wasps. The developed mechanism consists of...

Nature helps: Toward bioinspired bactericidal nanopatterns

Development of synthetic bactericidal surfaces is a drug-free route to the prevention of implant-associated infections. Surface nanotopographies with specific dimensions have been shown to kill various types of bacterial strains through a mechanical mechanism, while regulating stem cell differentiation and tissue regeneration. The effective...

Biomimetic Strategies in Tower Design: Towards the integration of tower subsystems

The paper argues that the tower needs to respond to its environment by changing from a closed building typology towards a heterogeneous, differentiated open system that can adapt to the changing conditions within and around it. This argument is supported by focusing on the analogies and principles of specific biological examples in order to...

Fibrous Morphologies: Integrative design and fabrication of fibre-reinforced structures in architecture using robotic filament winding

Living organisms have evolved effective structural solutions in response to the inherent constraints of their respective environments through a process of morphological adaptation. Given the fact that the majority of natural load bearing materials are fibrous composites, the authors suggest the analysis of appropriate biological role models as a...

Self-healing processes in plants: A treasure trove for biomimetic self-repairing materials

After an artificial injury in succulent leaves of Delosperma cooperi and Delosperma ecklonis rapid wound sealing by deformation of the entire leaf takes place within approximately 90 minutes. On the basis of comparative anatomical and biomechanical analyses of the closely related species conclusions can be drawn on necessary boundary conditions...

Plants as concept generators for biomimetic self-healing and self-adaptive materials, structures and surfaces

Plants have inspired the development of numerous novel (self-)adaptive and selfhealing materials, structures and surfaces over the last decade. Examples include: (1) self-repairing elastomers for sealing gaskets and dampers inspired by self-healing processes in latex bearing plants, (2) self-adaptive biomimetic attachment systems inspired by...

Towards the LIVING envelope: Biomimetics for building envelope adaptation

Several biomimetic design strategies are available for various applications, though the research on biomimetics as a design tool in architecture is still challenging. This is due to a lack of systematic design tools required for identifying relevant organisms, or natural systems, and abstracting the corresponding generic principles for...

Learning from nature: Biologically-inspired sensors

New emerging sensing applications demand novel sensors in micro-/nano-scale to enable integration and embedding into higher level structures or systems. Downsizing the structure will usually decrease the sensitivity of the sensors, since the sensitivity is a function of geometrical parameters, e.g. mass in the case of inertial sensing, and...