From Structure to Information. The Challenge of Instructed Chemistry

From Structure to Information. The Challenge of Instructed Chemistry 

The outlook of supramolecular chemistry is towards a general science of informed matter, bringing forward in chemistry the third component of the basic trilogy matter-energy-information. 

Digital storage and retrieval of chemical information is found in the nucleic adds where the basic digital operation is a two state 2/3 process (2 versus 3 hydrogen bonds in A T and G C base pairs respectively) corresponding to the usual 0/1 commutation of electronic computers. It may also be envisaged for multisite receptors or multiredox systems possessing distinct states of site occupation or of oxidation. 

Molecular and supramolecular devices incorporated into ultra-micro-circuits represent potential hardware components of eventual systems that might qualify as molecular computers, whose highly integrated architecture and operation would not be of the von Neumann type. On the biological side, the fabrication of components for sensory and motor protheses could be considered. All these entities may result from the self-assembly of suitably instructed subunits so that computing via self-assembly may be envisaged. 

One may note that folding and structure generation in biological macromolecules could occur through parallel search with formation of local arrangements which 

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