Challenges and opportunities for innovation in bioinformed sustainable materials

TLDR

Nature offers abundant information for novel material design, yet significant challenges remain in replicating biological form, function, and sustainability. The study identifies key challenges and proposes a biodiversity‑driven, high‑throughput approach to develop bioinformed materials, outlining ways to address these challenges and promising prospects. The authors frame the challenges into two areas—harnessing biological information for innovation, and designing/manufacturing bioinformed materials—proposing a biodiversity‑driven, high‑throughput characterization strategy linked to environmental context.

Abstract

Abstract Nature provides a rich source of information for the design of novel materials; yet there remain significant challenges in the design and manufacture of materials that replicate the form, function, and sustainability of biological solutions. Here, we identify key challenges and promising approaches to the development of materials informed by biology. These challenges fall into two main areas; the first relates to harnessing biological information for materials innovation, including key differences between biological and synthetic materials, and the relationship between structure and function. We propose an approach to materials innovation that capitalizes on biodiversity, together with high-throughput characterization of biological material architectures and properties, linked to environmental and ecological context. The second area relates to the design and manufacture of bioinformed materials, including the physical scale of material architectures and manufacturing scale up. We suggest ways to address these challenges and promising prospects for a bioinformed approach to materials innovation.