From Biological to Biomimetic Mineralization: Construction of New Functional Life Forms

Abstract

: Biomineralization is an important biological process of organisms to produce organic-inorganic composites with hierarchical structures, where the biological matrix plays a predominant role in the regulation of nucleation, orientation, growth, and self-assembly of inorganic materials. According to the principle of biomineralization, bionic organic-inorganic composites with well-defined structure and excellent properties can be thus synthesized under a biomatrix-mediated process. Intriguingly, it is now possible to obtain new functionalized organisms by means of biomimetic mineralization through synergistic integration of structure and function of both materials and organisms, which has become an emerging direction. This review first introduces the basic theory and phenomenon of biological mineralization in nature. Then, by introducing the structure and function of biological minerals, we propose the concept of biomimetic construction of new functional life, and systematically introduce the methods involving the construction of new material-organisms hybrid. On this basis, such biomineralization-based engineering strategy provides a new way to produce materials-organisms hybrids as new life forms, and shows immense potentials in environmental protection, energy, medicine and other fields. Finally, the limitations and problems existing in this field are discussed, and promising prospects of intelligent construction of materials-organisms hybrids are also presented. We believe the biomineralization-based engineering of organisms can promote the continuous fusion of disciplinary boundaries and bioinorganic