Abstract
The morphologies of biological materials, from body shapes to membranes within cells, are typically curvaceous and flexible, in contrast to the angular, facetted shapes of inorganic matter. An alternative dichotomy has it that biomolecules typically assemble into aperiodic structures in vivo, in contrast to inorganic crystals. This paper explores the evolution of our understanding of structures across the spectrum of materials, from living to inanimate, driven by those naive beliefs, with particular focus on the development of crystallography in materials science and biology. The idea that there is a clear distinction between these two classes of matter has waxed and waned in popularity through past centuries. Our current understanding, driven largely by detailed exploration of biomolecular structures at the sub-cellular level initiated by Bernal and Astbury in the 1930s, and more recent explorations of sterile soft matter, makes it clear that this is a false dichotomy. For example, liquid crystals and other soft materials are common to both living and inanimate materials. The older picture of disjoint universes of forms is better understood as a continuum of forms, with significant overlap and common features unifying biological and inorganic matter. In addition to the philosophical relevance of this perspective, there are important ramifications for science. For example, the debates surrounding extra-terrestrial life, the oldest terrestrial fossils and consequent dating of the emergence of life on the Earth rests to some degree on prejudices inferred from the supposed dichotomy between life-forms and the rest.
Highlights
The title of the meeting ‘Bioinspiration of New Technologies’ which led to this paper bows to the prevailing raison d’etre of modern science: in service of modern technology
The lessons of billions of years of evolution are worth applying to the design and manufacture of new materials and machines
Given my own interest in fundamental research the following issues came to mind on reflecting on this theme: (1) What is biology? (2) How do the physical sciences inform biology? (3) How does biology inform the physical sciences? (4) Are the biological and physical universes distinct?
Summary
The title of the meeting ‘Bioinspiration of New Technologies’ which led to this paper bows to the prevailing raison d’etre of modern science: in service of modern technology. In contrast to the clean, characteristically ‘spotty’ diffraction patterns from highly crystalline minerals, biological matter was revealed to be less ordered, with a virtual continuum from discrete diffractions spots in the former, to diffuse structure in the latter, illustrated by the examples of figure 3. Since many (non-structural) proteins are explicitly constructed to avoid aggregation into larger units, they can only be coaxed to crystallize with added molecules, such as detergents, which surely perturb the usual hydrophobic–hydrophilic balance that is so critical to biological activity These caveats aside, the continuing efforts to deduce the geometry of biomaterials at the atomic and molecular scales, is driven by a simple principle, common across the life and natural sciences: ‘Structure is function’. As in all victory tales, this triumphal narrative 4 skirts around a less well-understood issue, namely the nature of crystallinity versus liquid crystallinity and the distinction between structural order and disorder
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