Carbohydrate-inspired polymers

This chapter introduced the nature-inspired polymers with the ability to mimic cell activity for advanced drug and gene delivery. These polymers have been combined with biomolecules such as carbohydrates, peptides, and proteins, which played the prominent roles not only of excellent drug carriers but also of drug molecules themselves. For further... 

In the rapidly expanding area of nanochemistry, chemists often use Nature as inspiration to create their systems and in trying to mimic Nature, both in the efficiency and the perfection of the structures a number of natural building blocks have already been incorporated into synthetic materials. We have already reviewed how structurally simple natural building blocks (such as lipids, amino acids, peptides, carbohydrates and natural polymers)... 

Another important goal of modern chemistry is directly inspired by nature the hope to produce artificial life, or at least some systems that share many of the attributes of life. The ultimate goal of biomimetic chemistry is to mimic fife itself, not in the form that it now has but in alternate forms. Chemists have generalized so many types of substances—novel polymers, novel carbohydrates and amino acids, novel hormones and enzyme inhibitors—that to generalize natural chemistry is one of their most characteristic activities. Can they generalize life itself Time will tell. 

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