Abstract
Biological entities range in scale and complexity from the simplest viruses to multicellular organisms with specialized cells, tissues, and organs. Within a cell of any organism, there are an enormous number of biomolecular complexes that perform physical and chemical tasks with remarkable speed and fidelity. The goals in many nanoscale engineering applications mirror the major challenges that Nature has overcome in the engineering of biomolecular systems. As such, there exist some basic paradigms of biological design that can either be mimicked or exploited for nanoengineering applications. In this chapter, several paradigms for biological control at the nanoscale are identified, and several key examples are leveraged to identify how these ideas can be used in a range of engineered systems.
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Spakowitz, A.J. (2015). Complex Biological Systems. In: Bainbridge, W., Roco, M. (eds) Handbook of Science and Technology Convergence. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04033-2_81-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04033-2_81-1
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