Protein and Peptide Biomimicry: Gold-Mining Inspiration from Nature's Ingenuity.

This article presents research on the mimicry of natural molecules, particularly proteins. Biomimicry refers to a design principle that uses Nature as model, mentor and measure. Recapitulating protein function in simplified synthetic scaffolds or foldamers is an alternative approach to circumventing the protein folding problem. Foldamers have the ability to mimic a variety of simple secondary structures and are advantageous for mimicking biological systems. The use of synthetic methods for making foldamers have been adapted from solid-phase methods for conventional peptides.