Despite significant advances in synthetic materials design, the complexity of living matter dwarfs what is presently achievable in artificial materials. Biological systems achieve these feats by precisely controlling dynamic properties, suggesting that it should be possible to achieve the same, or possibly better, control in synthetic materials. But how do we design complex functional materials without the luxury of billions of years of evolution? Here, we introduce a method for materials design that directly targets dynamic functions in self-assembled materials. We then apply the method to discover the design rules for a common error-correcting mechanism in biological systems, kinetic proofreading. While canonical models of kinetic proofreading assume an unlimited supply of energy, we find that the optimal proofreading mechanism fundamentally changes in energy-scarce environments. This optimal mechanism leads to orders of magnitude improvement in both product formation and error reduction simultaneously
Ella M. King, Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Northwestern University
Host: Istvan Kovacs
Joan West
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