Editorial [Hot Topic: Bio-Inspired Nanomaterials (Guest Editor: Yong Zhou)]

Beyond the agricultural and industrial revolutions of the past, a global technology revolution is now leading to social, economic, political, and personal change throughout the world. A number of technology-related trends appear to have significant effects on modern society. The frontiers of research in science, engineering and technology are being driven to a dominant extent by developments in nanomaterials. Nanomaterials are a rapidly evolving field of material science, which were invented late in the twentieth century. Nanomaterials encompass a diverse collection of disciplines and involve many different faces. All of the nanomaterials share a central concept: the ability to exhibit distinct properties from the corresponding bulk materials originating from quantum effect. Recently, a growing number of interdisciplinary research themes between biology and nanomaterials have emerged. While biotechnology is revolutionizing living organisms, nanotechnology will produce products, components, and systems that are miniature, smart and multi-functional. Bio-inspired nanomaterials harness biological processes, and shape, chemical and physical functionality of biomolecules for atom-levelly controllable engineering and manufacturing of advanced materials with extreme precision. The potential developments of these advanced materials are likely to change almost everything from vaccines to artificial tissues and organs to quantum computers. Bio-directed control over the fundamental building blocks of nanomaterials will be expected to initiate a real "second industrial revolution" in the middle and second half of the 21st century. Current Nanoscience is devoted to spotlighting most recent advances in nanoscience and nanotechnology. The present first hot-topic issue of Current Nanoscience covers several remarkable aspects of the bio-inspired nanomaterial fields by a collection of five impressive review articles. The issue starts with an introduction by Shuhong Yu about the recent advance in polymerdirected crystal growth and mediated self-assembly of nanoparticles. The hydrophilic polymer including biopolymer-controlled morphosynthesis and biomineralization of various technically important inorganic crystals are covered with a focus on how to generate inorganic crystals with unusual specialty and complexity in structure. Further review by Camarero deals with "Interfacing 'Soft' and 'Hard' Matter with Exquisite Chemical Control". This review describes recent development of new chemical and biological technologies for the site-specific immobilization of proteins onto inorganic materials and their potential applications to the fields of micro and nanotechnology. Gazit et al. describes "Molecular self-assembly of peptide nanostructures: Mechanism of association and potential uses." Hao Yan and coworkers introduce DNA-based nanotechnology. This review includes programmable self-assembly of two-dimensional DNA lattices, DNA lattice-templated nanoelectronics and DNA-based nanomechanical devices. Our laboratory works on the bio-inspired inorganic materials area with specific emphasis on templated synthesis. Our review briefly outlines the recent varieties of bio-templated inorganic synthesis from metal, semiconductor to magnetic materials. The involved bio-templates include surface layer (S-layer) of the crystalline bacteria and ferritins for two-dimensional order array of nanoparticles, and linear virus, microtubules and lipid nanotubes for nanowires, nanotubes and one-dimensional nanodot arrays. We sincerely hope that this specific review collection of the thematic issue on bio-inspired nanomaterials will provide researchers in these fields with newest developments in this rapidly evolving field for advancing research. We also wish to stimulate the next generation of breakthroughs of the bio-inspired nanomaterials, which will further enrich human life.