Graceful ease, precision and perfection, with which nature builds up and maintains unique and complicated biological structures, has always wondered humans, stirring their ambitions in striving to realize and even emulate natural paradigms. Biomimetic chemistry and nanotechnology are the terms introduced in the scientific community to define or distinguish research, which concerns itself with mimicking the essence of biosystems by developing artificial analogues, or with elaboration of functioning molecular devices which operate on the nanometer scale.
A biological concept of self-recognition of molecular components and their self-organization into supramolecular entities is considered crucial for the expression of specific properties. Tobacco mosaic virus, protein ferritin, ribosomes, mitochondria, rhinovirus etc. as well as the well-known and intensively studied DNA double helix are striking examples of “strict self-assembly” in nature. Supramolecular chemistry is the discipline, which studies the phenomena of these supramolecules using synthetic principles exclusively driven by noncovalent interactions…