Research in supramolecular chemistry has been carried out inmy laboratory for the past 12 years. Intrigued by the fascinatingpower of supramolecular chemistry, as seen in biomolecular recognitionevents in nature, we started out by trying to mimic the basic principlesof such recognition events in small artificial model systems. Ourfirst targets were amino acids and oligopeptides. We then movedon to proteins and nucleic acids, and we started to develop supramolecularsystems that, besides simple binding, also featured functions, e.g.shutting down enzymes or allowing gene delivery into cells. In recentyears and in a completely different yet related field, we have begunto develop self-assembling nanomaterials. The basic idea for thisderived from an accidental discovery of the interesting self-assemblingproperties of a simple zwitterion, which was a synthetic intermediateon the route to our amino acid receptors. This personal accountsummarizes this journey and is intended not only to present themost-important findings from our laboratory so far, but also toshed light on how all these projects developed over the years andhow our journey took us to where we are now. 1 Introduction 2 How It All Began 3 The Beginning: The Design of a New Oxoanion Binding Site 4 Tailor-Made Receptors for Small Peptides 5 Combinatorial Development of Peptide Receptors 6 From Small Peptides to Proteins 7 Nucleic Acids as Targets 8 Self-Assembling Zwitterions 9 pH-Switchable Nanostructures 10 Conclusion