This themed issue on ‘Biological and Bioinspired Materials’ of Bioinspired, Biomimetic and Nanobiomaterials is related to the 10th Biological Materials Science Symposium at the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS) 2014 Annual Meeting and Exhibition, which was held during 16–20 February at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California, USA.
The interaction of materials and biological systems is a rapidly growing, interdisciplinary frontier in materials science and engineering with boundless possibilities. Biological materials science involves the application of materials science and engineering principles to the study of biological materials, including the design, synthesis and fabrication of materials systems from biological lessons. The Biological Materials Science Symposium at TMS emphasises the primacy of biological materials to the development of biomaterials and biomimetic materials. Biological materials comprise the inorganic and organic constituents of biological systems, whereas biomaterials are synthetic materials developed to replace, restore or augment biological materials. The structure and properties of biological materials exhibit a breadth and complexity unmatched in current biomaterials. Biological materials are formed under ambient conditions by living and adaptive biological systems for multifunctional performance. The structure and properties of biological materials are typically hierarchical, inhomogeneous and anisotropic. Therefore, biological materials exhibit complex structure–property relationships, which are only beginning to be elucidated. Bioinspired materials (or biomimetic materials) have a unique, tailored structure and properties that have been designed based on the study of structure–property relationships in biological materials. Bioinspired materials most often utilise creative new methods of synthesis/processing and microstructure design in order to achieve the desired functionality.
The first Biological Materials Science Symposium, which was initiated and organised by Profs Marc A. Meyers (University of California, San Diego (UCSD)), Robert Ritchie (University of California, Berkeley), Sungho Jin (UCSD), Mehmet Sarikaya (University of Washington), Andrea Hodge (University of Southern California) and Roger Narayan (NC State University), kicked off at the 2015 TMS Meeting in San Francisco, California, USA, and has been growing and successful since then. Celebrating its 10th anniversary, the organisers (Po-Yu Chen (National Tsing Hua University), Rajendra Kasinath (Johnson and Johnson Company), Dwayne Arola (University of Washington) and Kalpana Katti (North Dakota State University)) programmed seven oral sessions and one poster session that covered a wide spectrum of biological and bioinspired materials science and engineering titled
■ Mechanical behavior of biological materials I: bone and teeth’ (honorary session for Prof. Robert Ritchie)
■ Mechanical behavior of biological materials II: natural materials’
■ Multi-scale characterization and modeling of biological materials’
■ Bio-mimetic and bio-inspired materials synthesis’
■ Multi-functional surfaces and interfaces’
■ Molecular, cellular and tissue engineering’
■ Biomedical materials, implants and applications’
■ Biological materials science poster session’.
The three and half day symposium contained more than 80 presentations, including three keynote talks and 15 invited talks, and attracted over 100 participants and attendees. Prof. Robert Ritchie, the recipient of 2014 Acta Materialia Gold Medal Award, and the founder of symposium delivered a keynote talk on ‘Multi-scale study of deformation and fracture in diseased bone’. Prof. Markus Buehler’s (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) keynote talk was on multi-scale design, modelling and synthesis of biomaterials. The third keynote talk entitled ‘Biomimetic micropatterned surfaces with switchable functionality’ was given by Prof. Eduard Arzt from Saarland University, Germany. Invited speakers included Joanna McKittrick (UCSD), Marc Meyers (UCSD), Francois Barthelat (McGill University), Christian Hellmich (Vienna University of Technology), Tongxiang Fan (Shanghai Jiaotong University), Benjamin Hatton (University of Toronto), Yu Zhang (New York University College of Dentistry), Anastasia Elias (University of Alberta), Russell Stewart (University of Utah), Candan Tamerler (University of Kansas), Malcolm Snead (University of Southern California) and Anil Kishen (University of Toronto). It should be noted that the Biological Materials Science Symposium has a good tradition in encouraging and promoting student participation and there were over 20 presentations given by graduate or undergraduate students.
During and after the Biological Materials Science Symposium at the 2014 TMS meeting, a call for papers was launched to allow participants to publish their presentations in this themed issue on ‘Biological and Bioinspired Materials’. After independent peer review and revision process, we are proud to present five high-quality original research papers in Bioinspired, Biomimetic and Nanobiomaterials, covering biomineralisation, biomechanics, bioinspired synthesis and biomedical applications.1–5 We hope this special issue inspires both new research and lively participation in the Biological Materials Science Symposium at the TMS Meeting in future years.
