Self-organization biological systems

For a review on the self-assembly of tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) which represents the best understood self-organized biological system see A. Klug, Angew. Chem. Int. FH. Fngl.. 22 565 (1983)... 

Bromley EH, Channon K, MouteveUs E, WooRson DN (2008) Peptide and protein building blocks for synthetic biology from programming biomolecules to self-organized biomolecular systems. ACS Chem Biol 3 38-50... 

Kohonen networks, also known as self-organizing maps (SOMs), belong to the large group of methods called artificial neural networks. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are techniques which process information in a way that is motivated by the functionality of biological nervous systems. For a more detailed description see Section 9.5. 

Syntheses of sterically modified biopolymers can clearly yield insights into the presuppositions and possibilities of biological self-organization processes of biopolymers far beyond general thermodynamic and kinetic descriptions of natural systems. 

It is essential to elucidate intermolecular interactions involved in self-organization, whose significance is not limited to material science but extends to the ingenuity of biological systems [5]. 

The scale of components in complex condensed matter often results in structures having a high surface-area-to-volume ratio. In these systems, interfacial effects can be very important. The interfaces between vapor and condensed phases and between two condensed phases have been well studied over the past four decades. These studies have contributed to technologies from electronic materials and devices, to corrosion passivation, to heterogeneous catalysis. In recent years, the focus has broadened to include the interfaces between vapors, liquids, or solids and self-assembled structures of organic, biological, and polymeric nature. 

There are two levels of self-assembly in the formation of tetra-, penta-and hexa-nuclear products from the poly-bipyridyls (L) 20 and 21 and iron(II) salts FeCl2, FeBr2 or FeS04 - the products are anion-dependent. The coordination of three bpy units, from different ligand molecules, to the Fe2+ centers produces a helical structure interaction of these helical strands with anions results in further molecular organization to form the final toroidal product. The discussion draws parallels between the helical and toroidal structures here and secondary and tertiary structure in biological systems (482). Thermodynamic and kinetic intermediates have been characterized in the self-assembly of a di-iron triple stranded helicate with bis(2,2/-bipyridyl) ligands (483). 

Biological membranes consist of a bilayer of phospholipids in which membrane proteins are either embedded (integral proteins) or simply adsorbed (boundary proteins) (1) (Figure 1.). These systems fulfill a variety of functions oT basic importance. One of the most significant is the compartimentation via the formation of cells and cell subunits based on the self organization of membranes (hydrophobic effect (2j). 

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