Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Biomimetics is an interdisciplinary field in which principles from engineering, chemistry and biology are applied to the synthesis of materials, synthetic systems or machines that have functions that mimic biological processes. Biomaterials are any natural or synthetic material that interacts with any part of a biological system. Biomimetic designs could be used in regenerative medicine, tissue engineering and drug delivery.
The mechanical properties of spider silk are a consequence of the structural organisation of proteins known as spidroins. Here the authors investigate the structure of the fibers formed by a C-terminal domain of a major spidroin: the study elucidates the mechanisms by which spidroins are transformed from soluble form into a fiber.
Microfluidic 3D cell culture platforms may serve as tools for the modelling of human tissues. This Review discusses the design, standardization and automation of such systems for non-clinical drug evaluation and investigation of disease.
Despite the enormous progress in the field of giant lipid vesicles, their use for in vivo biomedical applications is limited. Here, the authors discuss red blood cells as inspiration for enhancing those vesicles, investigating the required cellular features and the corresponding technical hurdles.
An article in Science reports an exceptionally warm and thin sweater knitted from stretchy aerogel fibres, whose core–shell structures are inspired by the fur of polar bears.
Cytokine receptor agonists can be designed with longer half-lives in circulation and with enhanced penetration of the blood–brain barrier by genetically grafting macrocyclic peptides into the structural loops of fragment crystallizable regions.
Understanding how natural surfaces repel foulants by wrinkling seems like a simple matter of elasticity. But the nonlinear behaviours that emerge from dimensional effects make for some intriguing new physics.